PJ Harvey talks new album, music that inspires her, new book 'Orlam' in interview

PJ Harvey wrapped up her extensive vinyl reissue series earlier this year, but it’s been a few years since she released a new album — 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project is her most recent. We’re excited to hear that she does have new music on the horizon, although it’s still going to be a while before it arrives. Speaking to Rolling Stone, PJ said that she’s been working on a new album, and it’s due out in summer of 2023. “I’m very pleased with it,” she told Rolling Stone. “It took a long time to write to get right, but at last I feel very happy with it.”

PJ’s been busy working on her book-length narrative poem, Orlam, which came out in April. It’s written in the traditional Dorset dialect, and there’s a standard English translation due out in August in the US. “I had a lot of fun writing this book,” she told Rolling Stone. “I really wanted it to be not only a book of a lot of dark and very sensitive and emotional things, but also of great humor. As you can see, I used the language to my advantage in doing that.”

PJ also told Rolling Stone what music has been inspiring her lately, saying:

I’ve become more and more drawn to soundtrack work. I think because of my love of film and television, I so often become completely under the spell of a soundtrack. Some of the greatest soundtrack writers would be Jonny Greenwood, Mica Levi, Hildur Guðnadóttir, her Chernobyl soundtrack for example, Ryuichi Sakamoto.

So I very often am listening to instrumental music from films, but otherwise I think sort of contemporary music I’ve really loved Thom Yorke’s solo projects, but also his work with the Smile. Mica Levi’s bands, her work with Tirzah, her work with Micachu and the Shapes, Good Sad Happy Bad. Gosh, and I recently came across Anna von Hausswolff’s All Thoughts Fly, which knocked me sideways. I thought that was amazing. Bob Dylan, I mean “Murder Most Foul” was absolutely astonishing. And I find no greater pleasure than when I see an artist who I’ve admired all my life, doing their best work as their most recent work. I think, “Oh, wow.” That just fills me with such pleasure. And I felt that with Bob Dylan’s entire Rough and Rowdy Ways album.

Read the interview in full on Rolling Stone.

Get PJ Harvey albums on vinyl in the BV store.