Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, the much anticipated follow-up to Is This Desire? was released in October 2000. The album, produced and performed by P J Harvey, Rob Ellis and Mick Harvey, picked up the Mercury Music Prize in 2001, the first album by a female artist to win the award. Described by the NME as "a magnificent, life-affirming opus" Stories… was supported by a lengthy world-wide sellout tour.
Uh Huh Her followed the hugely successful Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea. After a summer of live dates – including appearances at the V Festival, the Eden Project and the first rock concert at Tate Modern – Harvey finished work on Uh Huh Her in the autumn of 2003. The album was written, performed, recorded, mixed and produced by Harvey, who chose Head to assist in additional recording and mixing and Rob Ellis, long time collaborator, to play drums and percussion on the album. Multi-instrumentalist Harvey played everything else.
Extra-curricular projects include soundtrack work on Basquiat, Stella Does Tricks, The Cradle Will Rock and Six Feet Under and an appearance as Mary Magdalene in Hal Hartley movie The Book Of Life. In 1996 she worked with John Parish on the album Dance Hall At Louse Point where her words accompanied the music of John Parish for both the album and a live accompaniment to the Mark Bruce Dance Company production of the same name. She has collaborated with an extraordinary range of musicians, duetting with Thom Yorke, Nick Cave, Tricky, How Gelb of Giant Sand, Pascal Comelade, Gordon Gano of Violent Femmes and appearing on Sparklehorse album It's A Wonderful Life.
More recently, she joined Queen's of the Stoneage’s Josh Homme on his critically acclaimed Desert Sessions project [2003] and worked with Mark Lanegan (also of QOSTA) on his recent solo album. Harvey produced the debut album by American artist Tiffany Anders and also wrote, recorded and produced material for Marianne Faithfull's last album Before The Poison. In addition to her musical career Harvey has exhibited sculpture in galleries across the country and has had poetry published.
PJ Harvey will be making her first appearance at the Guardian Hay Festival this year on Friday 26th May, currently the only confirmed European performance by PJ Harvey this summer.