Wiki
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Release Date
7 July 2023
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Length
12 tracks
I Inside the Old Year Dying is the tenth studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey, released on 7 July 2023 through Partisan Records. It is her first album of new material since The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016), and she served as producer alongside Flood and John Parish. The lead single, "A Child's Question, August", was released on 26 April 2023.
Harvey began sharing photographs of herself in the studio recording the album in February 2022.In an April 2022 interview with The Observer, she confirmed that a new album would be released in 2023. In June 2022, she announced that she had finished the album and intended to release it in mid-2023. Throughout 2023, she teased the impending release of new music.
In a statement with the album's announcement on 25 April 2023, Harvey said the album took "many years of work" and "was a difficult album to make" as it "took time to find its strongest form, but it has finally become all (she) hoped for it to be". It was inspired by her epic poem Orlam, and was partially improvised with producers Flood and John Parish, with Harvey describing the meaning as "searching, looking—the intensity of first love, and seeking meaning". She additionally called it "a resting space, a solace, a comfort, a balm—which feels timely for the times we're in". Along with Harvey recording the album alongside Flood and Parish, the album is said to be "scattered with Biblical imagery and references to Shakespeare".
On 6 June 2023, Harvey announced a UK and European tour in support of the album, with 26 dates starting on 22 September in Dublin. Two concerts will be held in each city, to end with the last show on 31 October in Oslo.
I Inside the Old Year Dying received a score of 85 out of 100 on review aggregator Metacritic based on eight critics' reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". The Guardian's Alexis Petridis named it his album of the week, describing it as "enigmatic and occasionally disturbing" as well as "a rough-edged LP full of potency and atmosphere", and concluding that "like the Dorset woods they describe, I Inside the Old Year Dying is eerily forbidding, but intoxicating, and easy to lose yourself in". Uncut found there to be "a consistent low level sense of discomfort, or of familiar sounds or words taking on bizarro parallel forms" along with "sounds that can't easily be identified, or that sit in between recognisable timbres". Mojo's Victoria Segal remarked that the album "holds itself at the biting point between old and new" and called it "a record (Harvey) was born to make", while Uncut noted it as "a singular thing".
NME's Elizabeth Aubrey described the album as "elusive and mesmerising", and while "it takes a little time to immerse yourself in Harvey's world, once there, you won't want to leave". Tony Inglis of The Skinny called it Harvey's "most beguiling work yet" and felt she, Parish and Flood meld "indelible melodies and structures with a writerly form that intertwines modernism with ancient unknowns". Sam Walker-Smart of Clash felt similarly, writing that Harvey "meshes the intimate and experimental to create something thrillingly unique. Pastoral and poetic, naturally, but with moments of unease and explosive outbursts".
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