Following an excellent collaboration, ‘Henry Lee’ on Nick Cave’s 1996 Murder Ballads, Cave and Polly started a relationship. Two of the quirkiest characters of modern music, it was a Heathcliff-and-Cathy-style romance. Cave dedicated his next album The Boatman’s Call to their already-doomed union.

While there are arguments that ‘Into My Arms’, ‘(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For?’ and ‘Where Do We Go Now But Nowhere?’ could have been about any one of Cave’s lost loves, although perhaps not Kylie Minogue, ‘West Country Girl’ is indisputably about Harvey.  Let’s consider the evidence: Polly is from Dorset, has “a crooked smile and a heart-shaped face”.

Eight years on, she has written her own ode. The chorus haunts, but it is actually more celebratory than plaintive: “You come through for me, You come true for me, You be well for me, You come through for me.” The “you”, though, is not Cave but current beau, Vincent Gallo. Another artist. Another eccentric individual.

It’s not just the voyeur in all of us to which this sort of thing appeals. Like the confessional tomes of perhaps the finest author of all time, Henry Miller, such disclosures of the heart wouldn’t strike a chord if they weren’t any good. Miller could sure write, but Harvey eclipses him. She can both write and sing.
(5/5)

Release Date: 19 July 2004

You Come Through