PJ Harvey’s 10th album is out on July 7, with a new single ‘A Child’s Question, August’ out now.
This new album is the first since 2016’s Grammy-nominated The Hope Six Demolition Project . Not that she hasn’t been busy. She released a book of poetry, Orlam, last year and Seamus Murphy’s A Dog Called Money was out in 2020.
Inside the Old Year Dying is produced by long-time collaborators Flood and John Parish. Today’s song release comes with a video, directed by Steve Gullick.
Its story goes back six years, to the end of touring around her last album in 2017 and how Harvey felt immediately afterwards from the endless cycle of albums and tours. She felt a loss of connection with music itself.
Polly Jean said: “they all came out of me in about three weeks”. But that was only the beginning. The key to what would happen next – at Battery Studios, in North West London – lay in a three-way creative bond that now goes back nearly thirty years, between Harvey, her enduring collaborator and creative partner John Parish, and Flood: nominally a producer, though that word does not really do him justice.
“The studio was set up for live play, and that’s all we did.”
There is something profoundly uplifting and redemptive in the recording, qualities exemplified by the album’s lead-off single, “A Child’s Question, August.” “I think the album is about searching, looking – the intensity of first love, and seeking meaning,” says Harvey.
“Not that there has to be a message, but the feeling I get from the record is one of love – it’s tinged with sadness and loss, but it’s loving. I think that’s what makes it feel so welcoming: so open.”
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