Early in her career she insisted that PJ Harvey was the name of a band rather than the Polly Harvey who sang and wrote the songs and now the Dorset musician is giving more explicit acknowledgement to one shadowy male figure who has always had a close involvement in her work.

John Parish, given equal billing at last night’s concert and on new album A Woman A Man Walked By, led one of the first groups involving Harvey, and has played on, produced or at least been a sounding board for most of her music since.

The pair also shared another album equally 13 years ago — Dance Hall At Louse Point — the other work from which this evening’s setlist was drawn.

The restricted source material meant those expecting a few Harvey favourites (“hits” are beneath a woman of such intense artistry) would be disappointed but this was still an interesting rummage around a small tributary of a formidable catalogue.

With her foil making himself almost invisible beneath a downturned trilby, the singer was as terrifyingly watchable as ever, lurching from little girl lost to asylum inmate in a beat.

In a vintage ivory dress with binds around it that made her look as though she had recently escaped from being tied to a railway line by a moustachioed villain, with spindly arms jagging in all directions, she sang in a cracked lament on the maudlin April then thrust her hips and barked like a dog on the primal Pig Will Not.

Parish provided growling guitar, most notably the monumental riff of Black Hearted Love, as well as discordant banjo on Sixteen, Fifteen, Fourteen and heartbroken ukelele on The Soldier. Harvey completely inhabited his songs, elevating what could have been a forgettable side-project into something that stayed in the mind long after the barking had stopped.