Venerated singer-songwriter PJ Harvey has returned with her tenth album, the first since her 2016 release The Hope Six Demolition Project. This new record is entitled I Inside the Old Year Dying (Partisan Records) and Harvey has once again collaborated with producers Flood and John Parish.
Always keen to explore new styles, influences and approaches with each release, Harvey notes that she and her two producer-collaborators consciously wanted to “challenge ourselves and not repeat ourselves” this time around. Having initially struggled to find a direction for her next project, and even questioning whether she wanted to continue to write and release music, Harvey ultimately found that “a change of scale…to something really small” allowed the songs to flow out “in about three weeks”.
Indeed, I Inside the Old Year Dying features more pared-back arrangements than many of Harvey’s more “rock band” oriented records. Most of the tracks make heavy use of lo-fi ambient sound recordings and effects complied with and manipulated by Flood. These lend a sense of dreamlike mystery to the songs. Harvey also tried to sing in a different style to her usual “PJ Harvey voice”, and her vocal delivery seems to carry a folky, wistful quality here. That said, her voice is still recognisable and is mixed front-and-centre with sparse acoustic guitar and synth parts as well as stark drums providing sombre and melancholy musical backdrops.
The songs themselves are perhaps more meandering and less direct and hook-laden than much of Harvey’s previous output; instead, this feels likealbum music to get lost in and let wash over you. That said, the songs are nearly all under four minutes long and are all led by Harvey’s austere and mournful vocal melodies. And whilst the record may not be full of singalong choruses, the elegiac refrains have a way of weaving their way into your consciousness.
I Inside the Old Year Dying feels like a very personal album; experiencing it is perhaps a little bit like watching Harvey’s mind play out a strange and unsettling dream. Comparisons could be made to Portishead’s most affecting moments, or even to the darkly bucolic output of sixties/seventies folk revivalists such as Sandy Denny or Jaqui McShee. But, ultimately, this record seems to exist in its own world, oddly disjointed yet weirdly familiar.
Undoubtedly PJ Harvey has succeeded in creating an album that explores as much new territory as conceivably possible whilst still being recognisably her own. It might lack the immediacy or fierceness that some would wish for, but in amongst its muted and restrained atmospherics are songs as powerful and poignant as any of Harvey’s output. I Inside the Old Year Dying gently draws you into its illusory world of peculiar wonder and demands repeat listens.
Buy the album here:
8 / 10
DUNCAN EVANS