Credits:

Pj Harvey

Description:

PJ Harvey completes his first new album in seven years. Filled with a sense of new beginnings, PJ Harvey's tenth album, "I Inside the Old Year Dying," is now available. I Inside the Old Year Dying, PJ Harvey's first new album since the Grammy-nominated The Hope Six Demolition Project, is out now on Partisan Records. The album was produced by longtime collaborators Flood and John Parish. Indeed, throughout her career, Harvey has always ensured that she takes herself to new places at each stage. But her new songs are bold and original, even by her own standards. It is full of a sense of new beginnings, and in a most engaging way, it combines that creative audacity with a sense of openness and comfort. 'A resting place, comforting, comforting, healing. I think it's timely in this day and age," Harvey says of the new collection of songs.The story of I Inside the Old Year Dying goes back six years, to the end of the previous tour in 2017 and Harvey's state of mind in the immediate aftermath. She was acutely aware that somewhere in the endless cycle of albums and tours, she had lost her connection to the music itself, and the realization was troubling beyond words. Two things, however, led her to turn in a new direction of song, music, and sound. One was a memory of meeting artist and filmmaker Steve McQueen in Chicago during The Hope Six Demolition Project. His advice to me was to "remember what I love about words, images, and music, to let go of the notion of writing an 'album,' focus on these three passions, and play. The other was simply to "play". Picking up a guitar or sitting down at the piano and playing favorite songs by artists such as Nina Simone and Bob Dylan reaffirmed my passion for the art of music.When Harvey began writing new songs, it was not so much a first step back into the album, tour, album, tour cycle as it was a liberating sense of making music for the music itself. She was drawing on a sense of creative freedom that she had felt in the past with her soundtrack and theater music work. At the same time, her perspective had shifted from the larger themes of "Let England Shake" and "The Hope Six Demolition Project" (looking at war, politics, and the world) to something more intimate and human. "(The new songs) came out of me in about three weeks. The studio was set up for live performances, and that's all we did," says Harvey. If "I Inside the Old Year Dying" is a very tactile, human record, it is also because almost everything on it is rooted in improvisation. There is something deeply uplifting and redeeming about this work. I think the album is about searching, about the intensity of first love and the search for meaning. But what I feel from this album is love.I think that's what makes it so welcoming, so open," Harvey says.

Tracklisting:

1.Prayer at the Gate
2.Autumn Term
3.Lwonesome Tonight
4.Seem an I
5.The Nether-edge
6.I Inside the Old Year Dying
7.All Souls
8.A Child's Question, August
9.I Inside the Old I Dying
10.August
11.A Child's Question, July
12.A Noiseless Noise