‘I Wonder As I Wander’: PJ Harvey’s favourite overlooked masterpiece
Some may compare her as the 1990s protégé to the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Patti Smith, but PJ Harvey much prefers to walk – and perform – to the beat of her own drum. Continuously reinventing herself over the course of the last three decades as some kind of folkish chameleon, she has simply never known what it means to conform to one single archetype, making her one of the most charismatic and enigmatic forces to ever tread the musical boards.
From the bolt out of the blue indie rock revolution of Dry back in 1992 to the most recent epic literary influences of I Inside the Old Year Dying in 2023, Harvey has become a standalone reckoning for women in the British folk scene and beyond over the length of her tenure. Never afraid of twisting her sound or branching into new, fertile sonic ground, her outlook on the musical world is one that should inspire every budding singer and wordsmith – keep creativity at your heart, and never settle for less.
But as much as her ethereal force is a seminal inspiration to the masses, in order for her to have embodied such a persona for so long, she too inevitably has a long line of musical inspirations which have lit the torch of her passion along the way. When previously delving into her favourite songs, Harvey picked out tunes by everyone from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds to Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band as providing guidance to her sonic soul. But she also singled out one specific overlooked masterpiece which graced her with a vision – and a sense of spirituality – in a very different way.
The traditional Appalachian folk song ‘I Wonder As I Wander’ by John Jacob Niles may not be the most common choice, but in many ways, nothing less could ever be expected from Harvey in her all-seeing appreciation of the genre from both the past and present. With Niles being a determining influence on folk music at large, drawing from every corner of that musical scene, he had collected and transcribed many traditional pieces from as far back as 1900.
That case was no different when it came to ‘I Wonder As I Wander’, which Niles penned in the 1930s based on a small snippet of a song he happened to overhear a young girl singing in the street. Contemplating the basis of Christianity and its origin story of Jesus being the saviour of everyday people, the religious reflection later took on a new prescience of rapture among the folk music masses.
Covered by giants of the genre, such as Joan Baez and Linda Ronstadt, it’s clear that the track holds a certain sense of spiritual enlightenment or comfort to all those who listen in its orbit, even decades upon decades after its initial release. For the part of Harvey, whether her heart lay with the original or one of the many subsequent versions of the song, it evidently provided some level of awakening to a folkish world from which she never again wanted to leave.
While in no uncertain terms, PJ Harvey has always been about creating her own sonic universe and not being the carbon copy of others, it’s only natural that certain songs and artists have proved pivotal to her on that journey. ‘I Wonder As I Wander’ may not be the most well-known choice, but it definitely embodies every inch of her musical magic.
