"This is such fun," Polly Harvey exclaims, as her band rattle to a halt after the squalling tantrum that is Who the Fuck?, a silly little song that the woman who might easily be mistaken for a distaff Nick Cave clearly finds a welcome release.
Whatever she's singing, she sings it extraordinarily well. There is an entire family of voices clamouring for release when she opens her mouth, and she guides and shapes them expertly; often, in fact, the singing alone is so haunted and ravishing that it's almost as if it's being beamed from an entirely different performance. Or rather, you sense that's how this singing sounds, but rarely feel haunted or ravished. There's a glassy perfection to it, an opacity, but only rarely now a real emotional tug. When it comes, however, it can still be devastating: the way she lets fly the line "He made joy come loose inside me" could knock the wind out of you.
But increasingly, her beautiful voices are beating their wings against the confines of brutish, boxed-in little songs drawn from what appears to be a gradually shrinking melodic palette. Sure, she sings the hell out of songs from recent album Uh Huh Her, but they still sound like a collection of slightly scruffy B-sides. Material from her undervalued masterpiece Is This Desire? fares better, particularly a marvellously unsettling reading of the title song. Much of the time, however, there is the unmistakable sound of an artist treading water - she has found herself becalmed in a little backwater called the blues. More than that, the playful spite and spiky humour that surfaced with mischievous irregularity in her earlier records have been replaced by a constant, suffocating seriousness. When that connects with a really good song, such as the new record's The Desperate Kingdom of Love, performed as a solo encore, Polly Harvey can still weave a formidable spell. Too much of the time, though, she's only playing with the toys nearest to her, and after a while what used to be a good deal more than just fun is just boring.
· At the SECC, Glasgow, tonight. Box office: 0870 040 4000. Then touring.
