John Parish and PJ Harvey have made two albums together: 1996's Dance Hall … Read Full Bio ↴John Parish and PJ Harvey have made two albums together: 1996's Dance Hall at Louse Point and 2009's A Woman A Man Walked By.

The pair had previously been musical collaborators for several years. As a teenager growing up in rural England, Harvey contributed saxophone, guitar and backing vocals to Parish’s band Automatic Dlamini before forming her own band in 1991. Parish later served as co-producer, guitarist, percussionist and keyboard player on Harvey’s 1995 album To Bring You My Love and was featured heavily on her 1998 album Is This Desire?.

On Dance Hall at Louse Point, Parish wrote and played the music, while Harvey sang vocals and wrote the lyrics. The album was viewed by many of Harvey's fans as a minor side project, perhaps due to the top billing accorded the more obscure Parish and her own accreditation as Polly Jean Harvey rather than the more widely recognised PJ Harvey name. Consequently, it sold more poorly than any of her solo releases, entering the UK charts at #46 and barely denting the U.S. Billboard charts at #178.

It yielded only one single, That Was My Veil, which spent a week at #75 in the UK charts. Harvey later admitted that she let Parish handle all promotional duties for the record because she was exhausted following a year of intense promotional activity for To Bring You My Love in 1995. Reportedly, bosses at Harvey’s Island Records label feared that the avant-garde venture was “commercial suicide”, despite it winning generally positive reviews. Entertainment Weekly opined, “This is 'deep' music in every sense; total immersion is recommended.” Musician reckoned “The results are as engaging as they are disturbing....full of strange moves and unusual textures.” Logo felt it was “thrillingly sinister”, while Q magazine praised its “polecat scat and brooding rural blues," adding that it felt "more a series of themes and word paintings.”

Speaking about the album to NME in 1998, Harvey explained "I just really wanted to learn different things, and a lot of learning comes from working with other people. I tend to place more importance on lyric writing than music, and I wanted to somehow bring the music to a similar level with that, but I didn’t feel confident in myself as a musician to do it. I know John can write demanding and intellectual music – much more than mine, which is very simple. So it was really just to test my lyric writing." In 2001, she told Chicago Sun-Times, "People don't even count that, yet that's the record I'm really proud of. It was an enormous turning point. Lyrically, it moved me into areas I'd never been to before. Faced with John's music, which is so different to my own, it just made me write lyrics in a very different way and structure songs in a different way."

Parish and Harvey did a brief UK club tour with the Mark Bruce Dance Company in early 1997, performing the album’s experimental songs with a group of interpretive ballet dancers onstage.

Twelve years later, the duo released A Woman A Man Walked By, also on Island. The album, which was recorded in Bristol and Dorset and mixed by Flood, was released on March 30, 2009 on Island. It consisted of 10 new songs, including an instrumental. All the music was written by Parish, who also played most of the instruments. The lyrics, once again, were by Harvey.

The first single from the album was "Black Hearted Love," which is described as having "anthemic grunge-pop guitars." The track debuted on the Zane Lowe Show on March 2.

The album was described by journalist John Harris, as "...mischievous, deadly serious, elegant and poetic, and possessed of a brutal power – it is doubtful that you will hear a record as brimming with creative brio and musical invention this year." In a track by track synopsis on their website, The Fly described the album as "a body of folk tales, funeral songs and trapped, tangled love songs... brilliant."

Cracks In The Canvas
John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey Lyrics

Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴

Had do we cope
With the days after a death?
Empty days, nothing left
Not even a funeral

I see shapes falling inside
Paintings
Animals and humans, row upon row

Walking toward something
Waiting for something

I'm looking for an answer,
Me and a million others
Disbelievers
Deserted lovers
Dear God,
You better not let me down this time

Cracks in the canvas

Look like roads
That never end

Overall Meaning

The opening lyrics of "Cracks In The Canvas" are poignant and contemplative, exploring the difficult aftermath of a death. The singer is struggling to cope with the emptiness that comes after a loved one's passing, and is left with no closure as they didn't even have a funeral. The chorus emphasizes the sense of hopelessness, with the singer admitting to being a disbeliever and a deserted lover. The desperation is palpable in the final plea to God - a hope that there's something beyond the void.

The second verse adds to this sense of unease, with the singer seeing shapes falling inside paintings. This surreal image suggests that the world has become unmoored, and we can't trust our perceptions. The procession of animals and humans walking towards something unknown creates a haunting and unsettling image. The final lines of the verse "I'm looking for an answer/Me and a million others" encapsulate the search for meaning that we all go through after a loss. The song's title, "Cracks In The Canvas," suggests that the world is a fragile thing that can easily be shattered, and the cracks represent the wounds that grief causes.

Line by Line Meaning

Had do we cope
How do we deal with

With the days after a death?
The time after a person has died

Empty days, nothing left
A time of feeling lost and alone

Not even a funeral
No closure from saying goodbye

I see shapes falling inside
Mental images or thoughts

Paintings
Artistic works of expression

Animals and humans, row upon row
Various forms of life presented together

Walking toward something
Moving forward, looking for something

Waiting for something
Anticipation for an event or outcome

I'm looking for an answer,
Searching for a solution

Me and a million others
Many people share this struggle