Review Summary: So look behind, look before, life knocking at death’s door
I’ve always been fascinated by the origins of the neofolk genre. The idea that industrial music, the musical style generally regarded as the most mechanical and least earthy of all, could birth an at-least partial “return” to the sense of closeness-to-the-soil and cultural inheritance which folk music is broadly supposed to possess, has always seemed to me to signal something important about human nature, even if exactly what conclusion to draw from it should be the subject for another day, or at least for someone smarter than me to expound upon.
The opening paragraph shouldn’t be misconstrued to assume that PJ Harvey’s first record in seven years dives into neofolk. Spoiler alert,
it does not. But a similar melding of the modern (a sonic canvass very suited to 21st-century art pop and constant Elvis references) and the archaic (a rustic vibe and a lyrical sensibility out of the 15th-century) is very much at the intriguing heart of
I Inside The Old Year Dying. All together, Harvey’s latest isn’t particularly inaccessible on the surface, but there’s a lot to explore if one chooses, with the (Middle English-heavy) lyrics full of cryptic meaning.
Overall,
I Inside The Old Year Dying achieves the sort of poetic autumnal quality which the album title seems to hint at. The songs tend to be fairly slow, prone to gentle rhythms reminiscent of the easy rocking of a boat on water, but the mood varies from place to place, occasionally feeling positively sunny, at other times moving into a witchy and moody creepiness. Harvey’s vocals are the critical component, always entrancing but delivering a remarkable emotional range - from the angelic yearning of “Lwonesome Tonight” to the aggressive urgency of the cacophonous closer “A Noiseless Noise”. Musically, too, there’s a lot of diversity. Opener “Prayer At The Gate” plays a critical role in setting the album’s mood with its eerie feel and Harvey’s unrelenting “doo, doo, doo” vocalizations echoing, while the brief title track offers a more abrasive instrumental palette. Meanwhile, in the album’s latter half, “A Child’s Question, August” offers stately grace as a piano-led piece, while its counterpart “ A Child’s Question, July” dips into menacing and futuristic territory. Throughout,
I Inside The Old Year Dying proves resistant to parsing - if it’s often openly pretty and occasionally immensely profound, there always seems to be another layer to dissect.
Within the panorama of Harvey’s expanding discography (now ten LPs deep),
I Inside The Old Year Dying represents a new chapter, but one that feels comfortable within her latter-day output. Sure, if a ‘90s rock fan woke up from a coma today and threw this album on expecting a companion piece to the grungy notes of
Rid Of Me, he or she would be very confused, but these songs feel much more in tune with those of
Let England Shake (albeit far less openly political in nature) or
White Chalk (indeed, the most obvious sonic predecessor here). In the end, though, this record is different, as befits the restless creative spirit Harvey has reliably demonstrated - here, she wields a gnarled out-of-time essence, seeing a woodsy charm meet modern recording techniques. Frankly, the results lead to a very weird album, and ten or so listens in, there’s plenty more for me to plumb from its depths. It’s a mark of the record’s quality that said plumbing is providing a very rewarding task, and as a piece of esoteric yet engrossing art,
I Inside The Old Year Dying marks one of Harvey’s finest creations yet.
