PJ Harvey Announces Her First Album In Seven Years 'I Inside The Old Year Dying'

It’s been a long time since we’ve heard new music from PJ Harvey.

Since releasing 2016’s Grammy-nominated The Hope Six Demolition Project, she released an instrumental album for the Ivo van Hove stage adaptation of All About Eve, which featured the vocals of actors Gillian Anderson and Lily James in 2019, another soundtrack for the Apple TV+ series, Bad Sisters, with Tim Phillips last year, and since May 2020, has had her entire music catalogue remastered and reissued on vinyl.

Today, she returns with the announcement that she’s releasing her first album in seven years, her tenth record, I Inside The Old Year Dying, and unveiled the first single from the album, A Child’s Question, August. PJ Harvey’s new album will be released on Friday, 7 July, via Partisan Records and Liberation Music.

I Inside The Old Year Dying finds Harvey reunited with her longtime collaborators, John Parish and producer Flood. In a statement, she revealed that the new songs provide “a resting space, a solace, a comfort, a balm - which feels timely for the times we’re in.”

Harvey’s tenth album travels back in time to 2017 when she wrapped up the Hope Six tour and came to the realisation that maybe, she had lost her connection to music. 

After the “looking out, at war, politics, the world” that informed 2011’s Mercury Prize-winning album, Let England Shake, and The Hope Six Demolition Project, Harvey turned inward for an album more intimate and human.

I Inside The Old Year Dying “all came out of me in about three weeks,” Harvey said in a press release. She continued, “I think the album is about searching, looking - the intensity of first love, and seeking meaning.

“Not that there has to be a message, but the feeling I get from the record is one of love – it’s tinged with sadness and loss, but it’s loving. I think that's what makes it feel so welcoming: so open.”  

Listen to A Child’s Question, August, below and pre-order I Inside The Old Year Dying here.