By MIKE BELL -- Calgary Sun

It will take more than exhaustion and a nagging flu-like illness to get rid of PJ Harvey.

Sure, it might lay her low for a couple of months with "every infection imaginable" and knock her from the first handful of dates opening for U2 on their Elevation Tour, but if anyone is tough enough to come back, it's the intensely haunting English songstress.

She proved that five days ago when she joined the tour in Houston, taking over from The Corrs and Canadian artist Nelly Furtado.

When Harvey calls the Sun from her tour bus, days before the April 9 and 10 Calgary shows, she's still feeling a little weak.

But after two shows with U2, she's also starting to get into the groove.

"We're having a great time and the crowds are really receptive," she says.

Which is actually surprising because it's been said in the past that U2 fans really aren't that interested in hearing what the opening act has to say -- the sooner the U2, the better.

"I don't know if that's true, really," Harvey says.

"I classify myself as a U2 fan and I think U2 fans are a lot more open than most fans that I can think of.

"That's been the case with us, people are really listening and responding -- people who probably haven't heard the music before ..."

Anyone who's listened to Harvey over the course of her decade-long career would agree that she demands a response.

Her music runs the gamut from abrasive and sexually confrontational to wounded and emotionally vulnerable.

When she hits town, local audiences can expect to see it all.

"I'm just playing the songs that I want to play ... and the band are just playing the same as we would do if we were doing our own shows.

"I think that's all we can do," she says.

"It's rough and it's ready and it's raw, and I think some people will be happy to see that.

"I'm just being myself, basically."

Which brings up a good point.

From her first album Dry, to her latest release Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, she's seemingly revealed a great deal about herself, but, at the same time, played constantly with her public persona.

From theatrical glamour girl to shrieking punk queen -- who is PJ Harvey? "To be quite frank, that's none of your business," she laughs. "The music that I make isn't going about trying to tell people who I am -- it's got nothing to do that.

"I'm a very private person ... the only people who know who I am are my friends and family."

The rest of us will have to sift through the clues in her songs, making the superlative Stories From The City perhaps the best place to start.

It is her most musically accessible and lyrically straightforward effort to date.

The result of six months spent in New York during the filming of Hal Hartley's film The Book Of Life, Harvey's latest captures the essence of the city in snapshots shot through her darkly sensual and utterly unique lens.

"I wanted to write about really tiny moments, real moments and make them into songs," she says, revealing that the New York songs actually bumped aside an almost-written other album.

"I was very interested in staying very grounded in reality and not just following my fantasy or imagination fully. Keeping my feet on the ground and writing from there."

Which, again, translates into the music. Harvey says that during the recording process, she was conscious of making the songs more approachable and even called it her pop album.

Then again, pop is relative term. Harvey is still drawn to the dark side of human emotion and the beauty inside of it, and she's still exploring that in her songs.

Hence tracks like The Whores Hustle and The Hustlers Whore and Big Exit, which bleed with grit and realism.