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Album Review: I Inside The Old Year Dying by P J Harvey

 

Partisan Records 2023

 

Is it really seven years since The Hope Six Demolition Project? Did touring that album nearly do for PJ Harvey?  It seems that that the success of that tour turned out to be a double-edged sword. Yet, from within that draining experience, were drilled the seeds of this new album I Inside The Old Year Dying.

As Harvey's musical life began to crumble during this intense period, so closely entwined with the music biz, she had to ask herself “Do I want to carry on for the remainder of my life doing the same thing?”

She realised that she had lost her spiritual connection with music and was “heartbroken.”

 

Heart-break is not a concept I tend to bandy about. Believe me, it is a condition that is not simply remedied and for an artist of such feeling as Harvey, if she says ‘heartbroken’ it is likely to be a pretty dark experience.

 

The years-long path back to music came through words and her friendship with poet, Don Paterson who had encouraged Harvey to explore her potential as a poet. Then she was re-oriented following  conversation with the artist and film-maker Steve McQueen.  McQueen observed that she loved words, images and music.  He suggested that she seek new ways to weave these three creative strands together, elements he saw as integral to her being.

 

Harvey’s second poetry collection Orlam, published in 2022 became the inspiration for this album.  A review by David Woo was published online by The Poetry Foundation.  So, after spending a while returning to her piano and playing her favourite music by other songwriters, Polly Harvey made her peace with making music.

 

One of the attractions to me, of Harvey’s musical output has always been that it is distinctly English. It is firmly rooted in the West Country.  Her connection to that beautiful landscape and her deep-feeling for the nature of England, places her alongside XTC and The Fall, in my mind.

None are musicians wishing to Anglicise popular music, but who all wrote music that could have come from nowhere else, but England. Quirky, moody as the weather and different from the mainstream commercial sound of the day. This album is no different in that respect.

At the heart of this album is its poetry.  Harvey uses the dialect language of Dorset to carry us far from studios and auditoria.  The songs tell of people of Dorset, life between the rounded chalk hills, along the valleys running to the English Channel, in the woodlands and its micro-climate brewed up with the sea. 

 

Words like drisk, teake and Wyman hint at meaning and add mystique to the pictures and stories conjured up.  Every song brings more ancient words to the fore, breathing new life to the county’s dialect. It is a fascinating and engaging album, worth listening to for the language alone.

PJ Harvey Photo: Steve Gullick

The music provides the base fabric, but it never shrouds the lyrical content.  Rhythmic, gentle and unobtrusive, the music leaves plenty of space for PJ Harvey to sing in her signature style.  

The beguiling frailty of her high-pitched voice demands close listening.  At times Harvey speaks softly, at others she is vocalising, leaving a child-like trail of notes hanging in a sea fret, or floating on early morning, beechwood mist.

 

The album does not convey much warmth.  It feels to have come from a cold place. Flagstones, an ashen fire grate, thick stone walls and frosts.  Where August and July are referenced, the languid heat of summer seems absent.  It is an album of melancholy (twanketen) and has the opaqueness experienced as dusk (dummet) falls about this collection of twelve sung poems. 

 

Even the magic of an ash tree's falling seeds in Autumn Term bring a sense of being enclosed:

 

Aish trees gave their keys,

yet none will set me free.

 

And from Are You Lwonesome Tonight:

 

Thrice she draws her lips to kiss       

Mouthing for his mouth in vain

Thrice her lwonesome kisses miss

My love, will you come back again?

 

There is emptiness, loss and absence. From this you will appreciate how the whole album's work unfolds. Where PJ Harvey has reconciled herself to making music again, there remains the perpetual question of coming to terms with the challenges of living.

If you have enjoyed PJ Harvey’s previous albums, this one will undoubtedly satisfy your curiosity about where she has been in every sense, but it will also give a clear picture of where this most private of artist comes from. It is a fascinating artistic creation. 

Lyrics copyright PJ Harvey

 

Spencer Ide

11^th July 2023