50 songs to take to my grave 11: Sheela-Na-Gig

This record was another jawdropper. I bought the 12” of Sheela-Na-Gig by PJ Harvey on a hunch. I think it was Single Of The Week in NME and on learning she was a westcountry girl, I needed no further reason to buy it. It’s always a wonderful feeling when a hunch pays off. This one most certainly did.

Anyone remember that old Maxell cassette advert featuring the ‘Blown Away Guy’, where he’s sitting in front of a speaker and is being, quite literally, blown away by the sound? That’s kind of how it felt on hearing Sheena-Na-Gig for the first time. No girl I knew from the westcountry sounded like this. Polly Jean Harvey was gritty, dirty, wild and seriously rockin’. Steeped in the blues, she could also rip your eardrums to shreds with a single power-chord.

A sheela-na-gig is an overtly sexual, often grotesque carving depicting a woman brazenly displaying her genitalia. They are particularly prominent in the UK and Ireland and are believed to have been brought over by the Normans during the conquest in the 11th and 12th centuries.

In the song, the female protagonist tells of the harsh rejection she received from a man on presenting her naked self to him. “I don’t want to be unclean,” he cruelly responds, comparing her to a sheela-na-gig. “Please take those dirty pillows[1] away from me.” The anger and resentment in the female is felt in the terrifying musical arrangement which comes hurtling at you like a runaway train loaded with explosives. Harvey’s filthy, raw, distorted, bluesy guitar riffs, interspersed with muted strings and power-chords, is accompanied by a merciless bass and scattergun drums delivered with unadulterated fury. To top it off, Harvey’s seething, demented vocal is enough to make any man quake in his boots. This woman means serious business, make no mistake.

Sheela-Na-Gig was constantly being played at home, in the car, on my Walkman – everywhere I went. Wayne and I frequently screamed it out whenever we heard it. To this day it remains the most furious and outright scary thing PJ Harvey has ever done. While her debut album ‘Dry’ crackled with similarly raw, dirty, blues-infused alt-rock, Sheela-Na-Gig was able to stand alone as a simply awesome piece of work. The album was pretty phenomenal, but that single – wow, that single simply blew my mind.

Soundtrack:

Sheela-Na-Gig – PJ Harvey (from ‘Dry’)

Sheela-Na-Gig [live] – PJ Harvey (live at Reading Festival 1992)

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[1] In the classic horror movie 'Carrie', Carrie's mother (played by Piper Laurie), refers to breasts as "dirty pillows".