PJ Harvey: I Inside the Old Year Dying – Yearning for creative truth after a period of clutter

Just over six years ago, PJ Harvey came to the end of touring her 2016 album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, and like many musicians before her, she sensed that in the relentless cycle of promotion that even someone as experienced as her could succumb to, she had lost not only a connection to music but also faith in its powers of healing.

I Inside the Old Year Dying is Harvey’s response to the clutter of that phase, which was further verified to her as a passionless experience by filmmaker Steve McQueen. The pandemic helped to solidify her suspicions, and so the new songs here represent (in her words) “a resting space, a solace, a comfort, a balm”.

Within weeks, Harvey’s narrative scope altered from macro themes (global politics, wars, disease) to micro concerns (the self, emotional intensity, systemic melancholy), the end results of which constitute her most restful album since 2007′s White Chalk.

If the album is littered with reflective but dialectically odd lyrics – most are taken from Harvey’s poetry book, Orlam, wherein her Dorset vernacular is an intriguing bonus – then at least they are balanced by a natural leaning towards strong melodies.

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The likes of Autumn Term, The Nether-edge, All Souls, A Noiseless Noise, and the title track blend strikingly British alt-folk with a yearning for creative truth in ways that very few other songwriters can think of let alone manage.