February 4th 2022: Instagram photos of Polly working on music in a studio taken by Steve Gullick in 2022.



April 24th 2022: New album out in 2023 confirmed in an interview with Kate Kellaway in The Observer.



June 28th 2022: Summer 2023 confirmed as the release date in an interview with Kory Grow in Rolling Stone. The album was not demoed on a 4-track tape recorder, unlike her previous ones.

She appears to have fully and completely transitioned from musician to poet now; pay no attention to the guitar and effects pedals and cables…

Well, let the speculations begin!

When we first got a few shots of her in the studio over a year ago, I thought they might have been pictures of her recording an audiobook version of her poetry—and now that some of them have been used in the promo for Orlam, it seems it was a right assumption to make.

But these recent ones are different as they clearly feature an array of instruments so some sort of music has been recorded!

Now, will it be a stand-alone full-length album? The long-awaited PJLP10? My first guess—trying not to get my hopes up—was that she might be recording songs featured in Orlam (or maybe even an instrumental soundtrack to accompany readings) but who knows? I feel like she would want Orlam to stand on its own as a book, not overshadowed by a recorded companion piece. So perhaps a totally unrelated musical project has been growing alongside it?

Looking at the guitar pedals she's using, I guess we should brace ourselves for some utterly weird-sounding atmospheric tracks...!

(If you want to get an idea of how they sound like, check them out on Youtube: Arpanoid, Transmisser and -most importantly - the Rainbow Machine, all produced by Earthquaker Devices. I assure you these are some of the craziest guitar pedals on the market!).

Yes fucking please!

She may do an Audio version of the book Orlam, as many do in this days, and maybe she'll recite poems with some strange noise

Now we know for sure a new album is in the making and she is pretty pleased with it, So i would love to speculate a bit about it. Well, one of my, pardon the french, wet dreams is a psychedelic rock ( Doors like) PJ Harvey's album. I mean, We know, thanks to mr Bruise, that the pedals she is using produce weird sounds; and it's a fact she likes The Doors, so my hypothesis/desire may not be that far from the truth. What are your takes on this matter?

Well, we know it won't be accompanied by a demos album. Here's a quote from the new Rolling Stone interview:



If her recent musical interests revealed in interviews and self-curated playlists are a hint, then I suppose we can expect something more atmospheric, soundscape-y and non-linear? I remember her saying that writings scores for theatre opened her up so perhaps we'll get some non-traditional song structures?

Mh, i'm not really sure on what PJ will bring us next year, but there's a thing i know as a fact: it won't be disappointing.

I'm really looking foward to some mini-concerts/radio appearences/whatever( she has done them for the previous albums many times) that will reveal a couple of next album's tracks. I'm confident.

John spilled some beans about the upcoming album:

- at the moment it hasn't been mastered yet, probably it will be out next year
-the album is connected to the book Orlam
-some of the poems on Orlam are the lyrics of some of the new songs (tweaked so they could fit melodically)
- the songs will be in Dorset dialect
- keywords he mentioned: melodicism, atmosphere

4:20

They’ll be touring for the new album also.

^ I skipped through and found a bit near the end where John is showing his guitars (which is quite interesting in itself) and he mentions (about 1:19:00) that his "parlour guitar" is used a lot on Polly's new album, also that he is thinking how to recreate the sound of it when they go on tour! (Because it's old and belongs to his wife so he can't take it on tour!)


Ah, Bob beat me to it!

Lead single "Our Farter Who Art Unshaven" rumoured to drop in the first quarter of 2023.

Wouldn't surprise me
B-side "The Natural"? The one with the labrador ...

Marvellous interview with Mr. Parish, a legend. Now i get why she was so conservative and negligent in her answer to the questions which suggested a hypotetical musical version of Orlam.

About that lead single rumor, it would make perfect sense, according to my previous comment.