{"id":22731,"date":"2023-07-12T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-12T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=22731"},"modified":"2023-07-10T12:45:02","modified_gmt":"2023-07-10T12:45:02","slug":"pj-harey-i-inside-the-old-year-dying-partisan-records","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rpmonline.co.uk\/?p=22731","title":{"rendered":"PJ Harey-‘I Inside The Old Year Dying’ (Partisan Records)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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‘I\u00a0Inside the Old Year Dying’ is PJ Harvey\u2019s tenth album, and her first in seven years. Throughout her career, she has always ensured that each phase of her progress has taken her somewhere new, but her latest music is audacious and original even by her own standards. Full of a sense\u00a0 of a cyclical return to new beginnings, it combines its creative daring with a sense of being open and inviting, inthe most fascinating way. The new songs, Harvey says, offer \u201ca resting space, a solace, a comfort, a balm-which feels timely for the times we\u2019re in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that intro from the press release is as good a place to start as any, I started listening to Polly Jean back in the time of 5OFT Queenie coming out, stocking Dry when I first opened my own record shop, have moved with her through virtually every stage of her career and watched and listened as every LP has unravelled each with their own personality each echoing a time in Polly Jean\u2019s life making a statement from a snaphot, but always moving forward, the music itself constantly changing and adapting and very much as with people like Bowie and Nick Cave fans will be drawn to a specific era, a genre and sometimes not move forward with the artist happy in the now, unwilling to Embrace change, not something that can be levelled at artists such as Polly Jean.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So what does the LP give us again drawing on Polly Jeans words from the press release<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201d In the album\u2019s liminal world, scattered with biblical imagery and references to Shakespeare, all these distinctions dissolve. \u201cI’m somewhere where I’ve not been before,\u201d Harvey says. \u201cWhat’s above,what’s below, what\u2019s old, what\u2019s new, what’s night, what’s day? It’s all the same, really\u2013and you can enter it and get lost. And that’s what I wanted to do with the record, with the songs, with the sound, with everything\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Opening up with \u201cPrayer at the gate\u201d your instantly drawn into that world of Aural soundscapes faved by Warren Ellis and the Producer flood\u2019s work really draws you in, this is a very different PJ Harvey, the voice an instrument in the whole rather than a lead. Next up \u201cAutum leaves\u201d has quite a Soulful almost funk feel in the backdrop, but the vocals push the song forward in a very different way almost sitting outside the music dipping into and weaving through the Sound. \u201cLonesome tonight\u201d again has a very different feel a song that stops you dead and you just have to listen, the story unfolding takes me to a parallel with the Orianthi Poem written in old Cornish, this is probably my fave on the LP, it twists and turns and is I think one of the strongest PJ Vocal performances I\u2019ve heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSeen and I \u201c hints at past sounds but again the vocals move in a very different direction, the John Parish influence I think coming to the fore. \u201cThe Nether edge\u201d weaves a very different soundscape almost industrial in its reverb and repetition, but again the vocals sit outside moving in and out, The acoustic guitar that introduces \u201cI inside the old year dying\u201d drifts away as that industrial soundscape takes over, the music changing and adapting to the story being told. \u201cAll Souls\u201d enters almost hesitantly the piano and vocals overtaken as the distortion and reverb comes in. At this point you realise how strong the Vocals are throughout this LP I would definitely say this is one Of PJ\u2019s strongest ever vocal performances,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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