★★★★★

The chilling upper register of PJ Harvey’s voice has gone largely unused since 2007’s White Chalk, but I Inside The Old Year Dying finds new textures in her quivering falsetto, emphasising the melancholy of this pitch-dark fairytale she’s created. Her first album in seven years has Harvey eschewing the socio-political canvas of her previous two records in favour of a magical realist melange of folklore, Anglo-Saxon phrasing, Dorset vernacular, literary allusions, and enduring pop idols. 

Adapted from her epic poem ‘Orlam’, the intricate and at times elusive lyricism of Harvey sit at the fore of the album. Archaic lines such as ‘hark the greening of the eth’ are followed by discussions of Pepsi and Elvis Presley, whose song ‘Love Me Tender’ acts as a quasi-spiritual refrain. These are explorations of the unforgiving malevolence of both the natural world and human nature, a metaphysical otherplace where morbid tales of the past connect with icons from our present. 

Within this strange spectral plain, phrases recur like ghosts haunting each song: chalky children, the shepherd, the soldier. Where Harvey could once be compared with Nick Cave, here she breathes the air of TS Eliot or Don Paterson (who mentored her while working on ‘Orlam’). Harvey’s collaborations with John Parish and Flood, creative partnerships which have lasted decades, lend these poems a musical weight that never compromises their rhythm and meter.

The dark trudge of ‘A Child’s Question, August’, the panicked acoustic strum on ‘I Inside The Old I Dying’, the confused fuzz of ‘August’, and the insistent fruit machine-like loop of ‘A Child’s Question, July’ all combine to create a world both completely our own and entirely alien, adhering to its own seductive internal logic. Listeners will be uncovering new meanings from this atmospheric collection for years to come.

Released on Friday 7 July.