PJ Harvey confirms that her new album is finished
In a recent interview with Rolling Stone magazine, PJ Harvey has confirmed that her next album is completed and being prepared for an August 2023 release.
“I’m very pleased with it. It took a long time to write to get right, but at last I feel very happy with it,” she explained in the interview. Harvey was discussing her second work of literature, the novel-length narrative poem Orlam, when she confirmed that her most recent music project is on the horizon.
The singer’s last album was 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project. All told, the currently untitled LP will be Harvey’s tenth record overall. Harvey has stayed in music but has moved over to scoring in more recent years, most recently with the 2019 Channel 4 miniseries The Virtues.
Harvey cited the soundtrack work being done by Radiohead members Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke, as well as the pair’s side project The Smile, as being current influences. Harvey also mentioned an affinity for Bob Dylan’s most recent album, the 2020 record Rough and Rowdy Ways, as helping to inspire the new LP.
“I mean ‘Murder Most Foul’ was absolutely astonishing. And I find no greater pleasure than when I see an artist who I’ve admired all my life, doing their best work as their most recent work,” she commented. “I think, ‘Oh, wow’. That just fills me with such pleasure. And I felt that with Bob Dylan’s entire Rough and Rowdy Ways album.”
Harvey’s current vinyl reissue series also provided part of the impetus for the new album’s creation. “It actually made me want to go back to demo’ing on my four-track again,” Harvey shared in the interview. “This last album I’ve just done, I literally sang in the phone; I didn’t even demo it, because I didn’t want to get attached to the demo versions. But then I felt like I’d missed out on an important part of the process, so it made me want to start doing that again.”
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