PJ Harvey – I Inside The Old Year Dying – Album Review
by Killian Laher

This is PJ Harvey’s first album of new material in seven years, and it’s one of her spookiest albums.  There’s a lovely strangeness throughout it, right from the muted opener Prayer At The Gate with its haunting do-do-doos.  The songs here are uniformly strong if a little unsettling, the soaring gloom of Autumn Term and the moody Lwonesome Tonight two highlights early into the album.  After an acapella beginning Seem An I is more traditional Harvey fare, albeit very much on the stripped-down side of her material.

Elsewhere, the woozy, indistinct All Souls has bags of charm yet will have you scratching your head wondering what’s going on with it.  A Child’s Question August is one of the more accessible moments here, a slow, downcast march.  Here and elsewhere in the album, ‘love me tender’ is a recurring lyrical motif, cropping up here, as well as in Lwonesome Tonight and the distorted August.  Again the ghostly Inside The Old I Dying is gloriously moody, you won’t have a clue why you like it, similarly, A Child’s Question July, introduced by John Parish.  But after several listens you notice the exquisite playing across these tracks.  The final track A Noiseless Noise belies its title, it’s the noisiest thing here with drums and clanging guitars.

The songs are short and slight, but it works, in a similar way to Nick Cave’s Push The Sky Away.  A summer soundtrack this is not, it’s for quiet nights in.

A Child’s Question, August