PJ Harvey latest news on 2023 new album

PJ Harvey is set to release her first album since 2016 in 2023.

The 52-year-old musician-and-poet admits it took “a long time” to finish the follow-up to ‘Hope Six Demolition Project’ – which is as yet untitled – but it was worth the wait.

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The singer said of the work to date: “I’m very pleased with it. Adding “It took a long time to write to get right, but at last, I feel very happy with it.”

The ‘Rid Of Me’ singer also revealed she has been inspired by a lot of soundtracks lately, including those by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, while she’s also a fan of the ‘Creep’ group’s frontman Thom Yorke’s solo works and Bob Dylan’s ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ album.

She said: “I’ve become more and more drawn to soundtrack work. I think because of my love of film and television, I so often become completely under the spell of a soundtrack. Some of the greatest soundtrack writers would be Jonny Greenwood, Mica Levi, Hildur Guðnadóttir, her Chernobyl soundtrack, for example, Ryuichi Sakamoto.”

She inspired Kurt Cobain. She soundtracked the fury and malaise of ’90s third-wave feminism. She fraternized with Nick Cave and lost her blue-eyed girl in the river. She’s come to us with visions of bright new love and with the horrors of World War I. She’s lain with the devil and cursed God above.

PJ Harvey has never made a bad album. Anybody who tells you otherwise is not your friend.

PJ added: “So I very often am listening to instrumental music from films, but otherwise I think sort of contemporary music I’ve really loved Thom Yorke’s solo projects, but also his work with the Smile. Mica Levi’s bands, her work with Tirzah, her work with Micachu and the Shapes, ‘Good Sad Happy Bad’. Gosh, and I recently came across Anna von Hausswolff’s ‘All Thoughts Fly’, which knocked me sideways. I thought that was amazing. Bob Dylan, I mean “Murder Most Foul” was absolutely astonishing. And I find no greater pleasure than when I see an artist who I’ve admired all my life, doing their best work as their most recent work. I think, ‘Oh, wow.’ That just fills me with such pleasure. And I felt that with Bob Dylan’s entire ‘Rough and Rowdy Ways’ album.”

Harvey also said of her recent reissues and demos, “I think because a lot of time had passed since making those demos and now, it felt like a nice thing to do. To let people in, to see a little more of the process, how the songs first start. Also, I was very attached to the demos because they’re always the first incarnation of the songs. There’s something about the spirit of the song being caught in a way that it’s never quite captured again on the album.”

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