PJH LP11 — updates & speculation

[TheNightingale]

Lately I’ve been extremely fascinated by black holes and the universe. If you’ve ever gone looking into black holes deeply, oh my gosh. I mean, talk about mind-boggling.
…
When you’re reading things about space or the universe, do you feel like all that can inform your work?
Everything I come across that’s new all somehow goes into the well of me. And that might turn around and come out as a piece of work at some point.

—The Believer, 13 Dec 2023

Why did you choose to finish the album with [“A Noiseless Noise”]?
I think the way the song turned out, that rush of energy that it became, and quite an angry energy to it—it doesn’t feel like closing the door, it feels like stepping into another room, almost like opening the door to where I’m gonna go next.

—WXPN World Café, 15 Dec 2023

I’m studying again. I’m slowly moving towards what would be my next book. It’s so gargantuan at the moment. I couldn’t even possibly tell you what it is, but I’m having to do a lot of study and I’m enjoying that. It is very unwieldy right now, and that’s usually the process. You start off with aiming in such a wide field, you’re never sure where it’s going to end up. And slowly it’ll start taking me somewhere, which will come a more refined path.

—Vanity Fair, 1 Mar 2024

I’m starting down the road of my next project, and [John Parish]’s very involved in it. I talk to him about it all the time.
…
For the next project, I’d probably keep songs quite separate to poems. A song is a song, and a poem is a poem; I’m not going to try and set poems to music.
…
Do you think the poems and songs will be related to one another in your next project?
I think the theme will be.

—Rolling Stone, 18 Sep 2024

I look forward to the year ahead and continuing work on my next project.

—A Colour Field playlist posted to pjharvey.net, 31 Dec 2024

I’ve actually already started writing songs for a new album and I’ve started working on a new piece of poetry. So right now, I’m excited about the new world I’m shaping little by little.

—Rolling Stone Japan, 2 Feb 2025

Since [the end of the I Inside the Old Year Dying tour] I have been writing songs for my next album and poems for my next book, which is a process that always surprises and challenges me, but one I realise I am committed to and love.

—Ending playlist posted to pjharvey.net, 31 Dec 2025

*

24 Jun 2026
“Voyager” single released

The song had already started life as part of the ongoing work towards my new album, so when Professor Brian Cox invited me to write a piece for his new show, I sent him the voice memo of this song to see if it resonated. It immediately made him think of the Voyager craft and the sound of its signal being sent back to Earth.

I have long been fascinated by the spacecraft and its journey, and asked myself what it might say to us if it could? This was an inspiring route to take to develop the song.

I’m very happy with the end result, and it’s wonderful to hear the orchestral score bring such expansiveness to my music. I thoroughly enjoyed researching the history and journey of Voyager 1 & 2, and was glad to be able to quote the great Carl Sagan within the song, and his famous description of our fragile and beautiful ‘pale blue dot’.

*

So now that the Orlam and I Inside the Old Year Dying era is done, and we know she isn’t retiring or fully rebranding as a theatrical composer or poet… should the speculation about PJHLP11 begin?

I’ve been thinking about the recent influences she was listing in interviews last year—re-reading T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, dipping in and out of The Book of Job, Kali Malone’s mournful drones of All Life Long, Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies… will death and loss be the focal point of the next body of work? Or is it just Polly’s regular gloomy art diet and I’m just reading into this too much?

[bruise]

She's not giving many hints to speculate about, is she? The only assumption I can make is obviously that this new project she refers to will marry songs and poetry in a different way: maybe we can expect a new book which incorporates songs and poems as different parts of a whole, or maybe they will be married in a different context than a single novel or collection. A screenplay? An opera? The possibilities are endless, and I'm already looking forward to whatever it's going to be!

[Sebastiano Boina]

Great job putting all the quotes in one place, i was thinking about creating a new album thread these months, but i've been overloaded with work.

Ithink you missed a early one though:

-2023-12-15 World Cafe interview:

-why did you choose to finish the album with this song? [she's asking about Noiseless Noise]
- i think the way this song turned out, and that's a rush of energy that it became, and quite an angry energy to it, almost felt like um... it doesn't feel like closing the door, it feels like stepping into another room, um, and almost like opening the door to where i'm gonna go next

i think it could be a substatial quote 'cause it may give a little hint about the theme of the next album, which will (Supposedly) part ways thematically with IITOYD, Anger and energy vs retoration/healing (according to her own words).
It also tells us that she's been working on the new album for a bit less than a year and a half. I'll say this again here, i think before the end of this year she will feed us with some huge reveal.

For the next project, I’d probably keep songs quite separate to poems. A song is a song, and a poem is a poem; I’m not going to try and set poems to music.

Which is great, that would mean IITOYD and the new album will be very different in another way: the lyrics will not be shared by the Poetry book and the album;

[TheNightingale]

Ithink you missed a early one though:

-2023-12-15 World Cafe interview:

-why did you choose to finish the album with this song? [she's asking about Noiseless Noise]
- i think the way this song turned out, and that's a rush of energy that it became, and quite an angry energy to it, almost felt like um... it doesn't feel like closing the door, it feels like stepping into another room, um, and almost like opening the door to where i'm gonna go next

Yeah, forgot about that one. I wonder how much this ‘rush of angry energy’ will translate into the sound of the next record—or maybe she just sees this song as a transitional maelstrom between two projects, a sonic separator between two bodies of work that doesn’t bear much resemblance to either? Hard to guess from just a short comment. But the final imagery of I Inside…, “A gawly girl / a bogus boy trapes the fields of feasen to a chammer of not-sleeping” also makes me think about death and stepping into a different realm.

I'll say this again here, i think before the end of this year she will feed us with some huge reveal.

That’s very optimistic. TBH I don’t expect anything from her this year or the next, maybe something in 2027, and I assume the book will be her priority, and then the album will follow. But perhaps some bits and pieces will surface in the meantime, maybe a chatty collaborator will reveal some information (thankfully John sure likes doing podcasts), maybe there will be some poetry-oriented appearances? She tried out the first poems from Orlam during a reading back in 2016, I think, so we could’ve guessed the direction she was going in pretty early on.

[TheNightingale]

It seems Team PJH are teasing some sort of announcement.

Spoiler! :

Art exhibition? Poetry book? New album?

[Romario11]

It seems Team PJH are teasing some sort of announcement.

Spoiler! :

Art exhibition? Poetry book? New album?

I think it will be the Brian Cox collab, he said it would be released in a few weeks.

Hopefully it's news of a new album though!

[Sebastiano Boina]

I'm not into Astrophysics, but i reverse-searched the image and googled for a little bit to find out what we are actually looking at, unfortunately without any definitive answer; It could be a nebula (maybe the Rosette Nebula?), it does look like one; alternatively it could be a planet (Mars or Jupiter?).

Now, if the pic does refer to the PJ- Prof. Brian Cox collab, then it's unlikely it portrays a nebula, since the Voyager-1 probe was never used to study/observe one; on the other hand the probe was used to study Jupiter and Uranus, which could give credit to my second hypothesis.

I doubt it refers to a the new album, but, hey, we basically know nothing about it, so it's not impossibile it does. I did enjoy the little song snippet they shared with us a while ago though, so i'm looking forward to the PJ-B.C. collab!

[TheNightingale]

Romario was right:



Interesting tidbit in the description:

PJ Harvey returns with Voyager, a striking first signal from her next artistic chapter and first new music since 2023's Grammy-nominated I Inside the Old Year Dying. The song had already been taking shape as part of Harvey's next album, when Professor Brian Cox invited her to write a song for his 'Emergence' world tour. Recorded with a full orchestra at Miraval Studios in Provence, Voyager takes its name from the NASA probes launched in 1977, still travelling through interstellar space nearly 50 years on. The music highlights the interplay between swelling string arrangements and pulsing synthesiser signals stretching out into the cosmos: icy, ethereal, and pensive, yet threaded with an unmistakable humanity. Across it, Harvey contemplates our small, fragile place in the universe; a 'pale-blue dot', a flake of snow, dust in a sunbeam, and finds in that vastness a quiet plea to choose light and to choose love.

It made me think of this interview from 2023:

BLVR: Here in the US, Congress just had hearings on aliens, and it’s now in the Congressional Record that aliens are probably real, and we’re probably not the only ones. I just find it so interesting.

PJH: I heard that, too, and, likewise, I found it interesting. Lately I’ve been extremely fascinated by black holes and the universe. If you’ve ever gone looking into black holes deeply, oh my gosh. I mean, talk about mind-boggling.

. . .

BLVR: When you’re reading things about space or the universe, do you feel like all that can inform your work?

PJH: Everything I come across that’s new all somehow goes into the well of me. And that might turn around and come out as a piece of work at some point.

[an tha]

Just listened to this - beautiful

[lepetitlord]

Wonderful, really live the ending, what a really nice surprise, I was day dreaming about a PJ album with orchestra not so long ago, i’m hoping this song isnt gonna be a odd one out

[bluesman]

Nice way to wake up, sounds beautiful.

[Sebastiano Boina]

I've listened to it 7 or 8 times now... at first i've thought of it as a very solid piece with a fricking banger of a last minute; the more i listen to it, though, the more it grows on me, it's just good! The futuristic echoes at 0:23 gave me strong "Everything in its right place" by Radiohead vibes the first time i heard them. I'm quite satisfied with the collab, ironically it's a nice way to keep PJ's career surveying into the unknown!

Polly shared the song lyrics too:







I fail to understand the meaning of "yeirs"... is it a misspelling / a dialectal form of "years" or is it something else?

By the way, the song tells about both the Voyager probes ( 1 and 2), not just the first one as i mistakenly wrote yesterday!


PJ's profile pic changed too, so we are officialy in a new PJ Harvey Era, can't wait to discover it in the next months/year!















one last minor and only relatively related thing:
I do have (very briefly) to get off my chest a thought (or, better, an entirely personal opinion) of pseudo-philosophical nature. Even though i understand (and in a way share) the core sentiment of it, I despise with quite a passion pacifism, which is quite strongly hinted in the lyrics (and linked to the words of famous scientist Carl Sagan), for the simple reason i find it silly wishful thinking which will never contribute to anything truly good let alone a real peace between different nations/people; i am aware though i grew up and lived in a family and economic conditions which probably is quite afar to famous scientists, artists and musicians, which could have helped forming my very pragmatical vision of Earth and its inhabitants; surely my studies and work (i won't get into specifics) contribute quite a lot to it too; all this to reiterate how it's completely normal to appreciate and admire someone without sharing their views, that's life!

[zemonsta]

You timed this thread well.

[lepetitlord]

I really really love the song, listened to it on loop today probably 20 times already.

The way she sings "kindness" the second time makes me think of When under Ether, maybe a discreet nod to the idea of "the next world" she talks about in the song, and the final "tender" is also evoking Elvis on IITOYD.

She really achieved something with this track , I cant wait for the album

[bruise]

I've been so overwhelmed by the utter beauty of this new song, I listened to it only once. Maybe I'll listen again tomorrow, but this piece touches me in a way as if I'm not ready for it yet. Very weird. By the way, she never fails to amaze me. This comsological route was truly unexpected