PJ Harvey - I Inside the Old Year Dying

  by Nick Dent-Robinson

published: 30 / 8 / 2023

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Review

P.J Harvey has released her first new album for seven years. ‘I Inside the Old Year Dying’ is very different from Harvey's previous two albums. In 2011 her Mercury Prize-winning ‘Let England Shake’ revived the spirit of classic war poetry while 2016's ‘The Hope Six Demolition Project’ was inspired by her trips to Kosovo, Afghanistan and downtown Washington DC. But now, the 53 year-old singer draws on her upbringing back in the wilds of rural Dorset to inspire a record that loosely chronicles a girl's journey through adolescence. Harvey grew up on a farm in Corscombe and the twelve album tracks – which she describes as poems set to music – take many lyrical cues from local West Country folklore and the glorious old Dorset dialect. Punctuated by words like drisk (mist), drush (thrush) and scratching (writing), the songs generate a bucolic, if sometimes unsettling, mood. There's an incongruous reference to Elvis Presley's ‘Love Me Tender’ on ‘A Child's Question’ where she also sings, “Help me dunnick, drush and dove”. The intimate, down to earth feel of the album is reflected in the music as eerie electronics combine cleverly with acoustic guitars. In what she has described as “a determination to avoid anything too P.J. Harvey on this record”, Harvey’s singing is different too. The bluesy power of old has been ditched in favour of a tuneful falsetto. “I Inside yhe Old Year Dying” might be the quietest album yet from P.J. Harvey - but it is certainly one of her most innovative!

Track Listing:-

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

Band Links:-

https://pjharvey.net/
https://www.facebook.com/PJHarvey
https://twitter.com/pjharveyuk

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