PJ Harvey has confirmed her first new album in seven years. Entitled I Inside the Old Year Dying, it’s due out on July 7th via Partisan Records. As a preview, Harvey has unveiled “A Child’s Question, August” as the lead single. Watch the song’s accompanying video below.
The songs featured on I Inside the Old Year Dying came together in “about three weeks.” Harvey then recorded the album live at London’s Battery Studio with longtime collaborator John Parish and producer Flood.
“I think the album is about searching, looking – the intensity of first love, and seeking meaning,” Harvey said. “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.”
I Inside the Old Year Dying marks Harvey’s 10th album to date and the follow-up to 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project. Speaking to Rolling Stone last year, Harvey said her new album was inspired by “soundtrack writers” like Jonny Greenwood, Mica Levi, Hildur Guðnadóttir, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, as well as Thom Yorke’s work with The Smile, Anna von Hausswolff’s All Thoughts Fly, and Bob Dylan’s 2020 effort Rough and Rowdy Ways.
She also said that her multi-year archival campaign — in which she reissued her previous albums and associated demos on vinyl — compelled her to “go back to demo’ing on my four-track again.”
I Inside the Old Year Dying Artwork:
I Inside the Old Year Dying Tracklist:
01. Prayer at the Gate
02. Autumn Term
03. Lwonesome Tonight
04. Seem an I
05. The Nether-edge
06. I Inside the Old Year Dying
07. All Souls
08. A Child’s Question, August
09. I Inside the Old I Dying
10. August
11. A Child’s Question, July
12. A Noiseless Noise
