Organ Thing of The Day: A full concert film of PJ Harvey’s recent show in Paris has jsut been released and posted, in an official way, on You Tube, here it is…
“An ecstatic audience has turned out to witness PJ Harvey perform at the Paris Olympia with a combination of old hits and nuggets from her tenth studio album: I Inside the Old Year Dying. A magnetic, no-nonsense performance…..”
We didn’t feel we needed to cover the rather beautifully rewarding I Inside the Old Year Dying, the tenth PJ Harvey studio album that came out earlier this year, it was rightly covered everywhere and really didn’t need anything from us down here in the undergrowth. The year is coming to a close though and as we start to think about those end of 2023 lists (unlike some we do actually like to wait until the year does properly end and everything is done and dusted,, really don’t get those publications who post their album of the year lists while we still have a month to go and significant albums are still being released). We didn’t review it back in late Spring but I Inside the Old Year Dying surely is one of the albums o the year, we can’t let 2023 end without at least a small nod towards the delicately beautiful piece of almost fragile strength and indeed those Sea Nymphs flavours that glow within the spirit of it all.
Her first studio album in seven years recorded once again with long-time creative collaborators John Parish and Flood, she’s and her people have constructed a delicate album that breathes so well, an album that’s in a space that really belongs to no one else, an album that plays between many of (English) life’s seasaws, between recent history and the ancient (Albion) past. Laced with biblical imagery, references to Elvis, Shakespeare, hints of things lost, things to maybe be found again. it is ultimately a very uplifting very beautiful album and although it really didn’t need our support back when it came out last July, it does need to be acknoledged on these pages before the year ends.
THE ORGAN 