On
Let England Shake and
The Hope Six Demolition Project,
PJ Harvey documented troubled times in the world; on
I Inside the Old Year Dying, she presents a spellbinding world of her own. The album expands on Orlam, her epic poem about the coming of age of Ira-Abel, a young Dorset girl whose companions include the bleeding, ghostly soldier Wyman-Elvis and Orlam itself, a lamb's eyeball that serves as the village oracle. As complex as this sounds, there's a lightness to
I Inside that's especially welcome following the scope of
Harvey's last two albums. Like Orlam,
I Inside the Old Year Dying weaves the old Dorset dialect
Harvey grew up hearing into its songs, and the local idioms only heighten its bewitching strangeness. "Seem An I" takes its name from the Dorset phrase for "it seems"; lyrics like "Billy from the boneyard/Wrangled 'round the orchard" set the scene immediately (and set the tone for the beguiling and terrifying psych-folk of "A Child's Question, July" later on). Even when the language is obscure, the mood is clear when
Harvey sings about "the chalky children of evermore" over church bells, brittle guitars, and booming drums on "I Inside the Old I Dying." When Ira-Abel is told "leave your wandering" in the clearing that follows the distortion and feedback ambush of "Noiseless Noise," it's apparent that something has changed irrevocably.
Harvey has excelled at mythical, intuitive storytelling on songs stretching back to "Sheela-Na-Gig" and "Down by the Water," and she continues that tradition with "All Souls," a creaking, tiptoeing "flesh farewell" that ranks among her eeriest work -- which is saying something. On "Lwonesome Tonight," she unites peanut butter and banana sandwiches, God, Elvis, and Ira-Abel's desire to grow up with a mesmerizing atmosphere that feels more real than some of her historically inspired music. The hallucinatory blend of folk, rock, electronics, and field recordings allows
Harvey to venture deeper into the dreamspaces she's hinted at previously. She partially improvised the music with longtime collaborators
John Parish and
Flood, and the occasionally loose playing expresses the album's slippery relationship with reality perfectly. On "Autumn Term," spindly guitars,
Harvey and
Parish's twinned vocals, and a playground's worth of children blur together, capturing how Ira-Abel hovers between childhood and adulthood, past and present, and safety and danger. A processional beat barely grounds the hazy "A Child's Question, August," which alludes to
Elvis' "Love Me Tender" with surprising poignancy. It's especially exciting to hear
Harvey reintroduce electronics to her music, since she used them so vividly on
To Bring You My Love and
Is This Desire. "The Nether-Edge" is one of the album's finest examples of this, with a lulling, looping beat and whistling synths that sound like
Harmonia reinventing the
Wicker Man soundtrack. A triumph in its own right,
I Inside the Old Year Dying's lively exploration is also a rekindling of something vital in
Harvey's art in general. Though its whispers and shadows may not reveal everything, they're more than enough for a fascinating listening experience. ~ Heather Phares
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