When it was announced that a new PJ Harvey album was being prepped for release, it felt like everything came to a standstill. The last time we heard from the virtuosic lyricist was in 2016 when she released her acclaimed The Hope Six Demolition Project. After penning a visceral poetry book and nearing a creative meltdown, Harvey has climbed down from atop her historic career for the humanizing I Inside The Old Year Dying. Considering the stadium-sized anthems that formed her previous release, the music of her latest work feels all the more intimate and immediate. These 12 songs feel like a vivid snapshot of Harvey’s current mindstate, muffled melodies creep through muddy arrangements that give us otherworldly textures, a perfect stomping ground for Harvey’s visceral poetry.
I Inside The Old Year Dying is in no rush and scoffs at its peers who have fallen victim to the satisfaction of instant gratification. Throughout her tenth LP, Harvey forces you to sit in her thoughts and stew in the emotions explored in her words. She not only wanted to challenge the listener with off-kilter arrangements and ghostly vocals but Harvey wanted to challenge herself more than anyone. After decades of forming an expansive discography, this latest release finds our hero toying with ambiance in a way that smooths the uncomfortable topics discussed. The sonic direction of I Inside The Old Year Dying is as ambiguously tempting as the album’s title as the instrumentals lean towards a more organic, nature-inspired sound for 12 songs of blissful angst.
The album starts off gently with Harvey crooning over a droning note, an ambiance that sounds alien initially but switches to nostalgic the more you listen. The instrumentals that shape I Inside The Old Year Dying are minimal even at their most lively like the explosive blues on the album’s outro, “A Noiseless Noise”. Ironically, the title of the last song is an accurate description of what you were just listening to. Throughout the album, these arrangements never swell to a boiling point but rather simmer on a low heat, finding solace in consistency and leaving enough room for the vocals to perform casual acrobatics. This approach builds up the tension of the record but never provides the relief we all expect, forcing these songs to take a unique shape to express the wide range of volatile emotions that are at the center of the LP. “All Souls” relies on relaxed, muddied, thumping piano chords that act as a pounding reminder that the heaven-sent falsetto only achieved its beauty through pain. On the other hand, “Autumn Term” provides a nice backsplash of color with its elements forming a wave that washes over the listener, providing a nice change in texture from an otherwise gray LP.
While the sonic direction of I Inside The Old Year Dying might come as a surprise to longtime Harvey fans, her songwriting is as moving as ever. Because of how the album is mixed, her vocals seem to be more blended with the music as they melt over each other to become a singular stirring piece of art. This approach may have you missing out on the poetry of the project but under the ambitious production hides a whole separate universe to explore. The lyrics feel directly inspired by works published in Harvey’s most recent poetry book, opting for a more vague approach that emphasizes the artist’s grasp of the literary world while continuing to push the narrative of the album forward.
“Lonesome Tonight” is as emotionally gripping as the title suggests with soft acoustic strumming creating a bed of ambiance for the longing expressed in the lyrics. “The Nether-edge” puts Harvey’s storytelling prowess on full display as the lyrics guide you through a troubled mind as it searches for some sort of anchor to ground its pessimism. You can hear the vocal filters adding a quivering lip feeling to the lyrics, a nuanced addition that brings this ballad to life and provides a texture only Harvey could produce. Her songwriting feels influenced by the production of the album and vice versa, forcing each small element of these songs to create game-changing moments on the album while allowing each small addition to breathe on its own.
PJ Harvey’s fearless creativity and decades of experience allowed for the experimentation of I Inside The Old Year Dying to sound warm and nostalgic. In just 12 tracks, Harvey sums up the whirlwind of emotions she’s experienced since her last release, allowing the nuanced vulnerability of the album to tell her story. The album finds a comfortable middle ground between the warmth of your own bed after a long vacation and the anxiety of entering a new era in your life. She deploys just enough ambiance to keep us listening without distracting from her overall message, allowing the hushed melodies and simplistic arrangements to thrive under the all-encompassing creativity of its creator. Throw whatever expectations you have for a new PJ Harvey album out the window and allow the artist to tell her story the only way she knows how; through heart-wrenching compositions that are as refreshing as they are nostalgic.
