In “A Little one’s Query (July),” PJ Harvey sings in a jaunty rhythm, “Who’s inneath the Ooser-Rod?/Attractive satan? Goaty God?”
The phrases sound playful as her guitar swells liquidly round her voice, and the couplet goes by so mellifluously, chased by whispers and chirping birds, that it’s simple glide with out questioning simply what the heck an Ooser-Rod is. However whenever you search for the phrases’ that means in Orlam — the novel in verse Harvey launched final 12 months, which she wrote within the dying (or possibly useless) dialect of the Dorset, England, countryside the place she grew up — the tune takes on extra of a nefarious that means: She defines “Ooser-Rod” as “a satan’s penis, abnormally giant.” Even stranger, the Ooser, based on Nineteenth-century folklore, can also be one thing like a carnival masks used to scare individuals. So the “attractive satan/goaty god” retort seems to be a type of forked-tongue-in-cheek, Freudian punchline.
This type of century-jumping, middlebrow double-entendre defines Harvey’s newest, I Contained in the Outdated 12 months Dying, not that anyone wants to know the album’s backstory, personal a Dorset glossary, or possess a Ph.D. in dialectology to get pleasure from it. However, doing a bit additional credit score makes a troublesome album to get into all of the extra gratifying — particularly for the reason that music’s somber tones and arty folk-rock preparations aren’t precisely simple listening. That stated, anybody who’s adopted Harvey previously 30 years is aware of she enjoys difficult listeners.
Between the thudding blues riffs of her early albums, she sang about proud feminine exhibitionism on “Sheela-Na-Gig,” objectifying Robert De Niro in “Reeling,” and measuring her personal spectacular Ooser-Rod in “50ft Queenie.” The rawness of the music and the blunt-force trauma of her lyrics made her a Nineties icon. However by the center of the last decade and into the early aughts, she grew stressed and began exploring gothier shadow play, in addition to the deeply emotional love songs of Tales From the Metropolis, Tales From the Sea. That restiveness drove her to discover poetry and use vivid language to explain the world round her, each her residence nation’s “gray, damp filthiness of ages” on 2011’s Let England Shake and the state of poverty around the globe on 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Undertaking. Feeling worn out from touring, she virtually gave up on music after Hope Six, as a substitute investing herself in poesy.
The fruits of her poetic odyssey was Orlam, which tells the story of Ira-Abel Rawles, a nine-year-old lady who sees ghosts in Dorset’s Gore Wooden, together with an apparition known as Wyman-Elvis who’s half Jesus (King of Kings) and half Elvis (King of Rock); the titular Orlam is the eviscerated eye of Ira-Abel’s lamb, which serves as an oracle. Because the lyrics to each tune on the album double as poems in Orlam, these characters are at all times current, demanding understanding. In that regard, the obtuse dialect and plenty of neologisms all through I Contained in the Outdated 12 months Dying really feel akin to Finnegans Wake (which most individuals wanted a “skeleton key” to know) or A Clockwork Orange (which may use a Nadsat dictionary). But in addition like each of these books, Harvey’s phrases make extra sense when learn out loud or heard from her mouth on the album. (Don’t overlook that Marilyn Monroe, who was loads higher learn than the characters she performed, used to learn Ulysses aloud.)
With melancholy music and Harvey’s personal Dorset accent articulating the phrases, the poetry involves life. That’s no simple process. Because the 12 songs on I Contained in the Outdated 12 months Dying started as poems, they don’t translate to verse-chorus-verse pop songs in any respect. As an alternative, Harvey, who has been engaged on rating music for performs and TV sequence in recent times, composed folky temper items that seize the essences of her phrases, which she sings in uncommon and sometimes beguiling methods. Lots of the songs, which she recorded with longtime collaborators John Parish and producer Flood, recall the downtempo energies of Let England Shake and her quiet 2007 album, White Chalk, and like these albums, the music right here excels in its otherworldliness.
The perfect songs are inclined to discover a hypnotic groove and stick with it. “Lwonesome Tonight,” which pays tribute to Elvis (in addition to an apart about peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches) lopes alongside like early-Seventies Neil Younger, with its fingerpicked guitar line and Harvey’s Younger-like falsetto tones. “Appear an I” cops an off-kilter rock rhythm that recollects mid-era Harvey that accommodates phrases like “wordle” (which implies “world”) and the disappointment in her voice when she sings, “and nuts I couldn’t reapy” (animal testicles her farm-girl character couldn’t geld). “I Contained in the Outdated I Dying” continues her Neil Younger harvest whereas hitting a few of the identical gothy tones of her To Convey You My Love album as she harmonizes with actor Colin Morgan singing about “the chalky (ghostly) youngsters of evermore.” The album’s last tune, “A Noiseless Noise” pays tribute poetically to John Keats and musically to the Beatles’ “Tomorrow By no means Is aware of” with its avant-garde digressions and sound results, although it additionally accommodates one of many album’s strongest vocal melodies.
A number of the songs are more durable to digest simply, which is probably going Harvey’s level on the album — to make individuals pay attention nearer. The vocals on “Autumn Time period,” harmonies sung in a sickening falsetto, sound gross on objective. And the title observe, which is without doubt one of the album’s most historically “rock” songs and runs solely two minutes, appears like a sound collage of fairly and grotesque sounds with a keyboard or guitar sputtering out on the finish. The textures in “August” by no means totally come into focus — actor Ben Whishaw whispers a spherical of “Love Me Tender” within the background — and the entire impact is sort of a palimpsest of ghostlike communications.
I Contained in the Outdated 12 months Dying usually appears like a closet drama, set in enchanted woods, with music drifting between the timber and whispers echoing within the distance. Because the story takes extra of a again seat right here than it does in Orlam, you generally need to belief within the magic of the sounds. Harvey, right here, is hanging on one thing completely different, one thing outdoors of conventional music, in order that belief is essential. The report ends with Harvey singing “Go residence now, love, depart your wandering …” to her Ira-Abel character, however listening to the journey that led to that time feels like Harvey will at all times have extra enjoyable wandering — even when she’s doing so at a desk at residence.
