PJ HARVEY

I Inside The Old Year Dying (Partisan)

The further and further away we get from PJ Harvey’s 2007 album White Chalk, the more that LP seems to signify a complete shift in her work, a clean before-and-after in her discography. Before: earthy, grungy alternative rock, hewing close to the defining mood of that era. After: ethereal, intangible tones, with whispers of folk and blues but pulled away from contemporary time.

It’s a move that has served to push her music away from the zeitgeist and into a more rewarding songwriter (let down only occasionally when she attempts reportage-style lyrics as she did in her previous album The Hope Six Demolition Project). I Inside The Old Year Dying grew out of PJ Harvey’s improvisation, and you can feel that wispy, off-the-cuff feel in the song structures, which sometimes lack grounding but make up for it with fantastic atmos, drenched in reverb as if recorded in a church; the repetition of tracks like Prayer At The Gate and A Child’s Question, August emerging from what sounds like a distorted historical memory.

words FEDOR TOT