First photo I've seen!



Source: http://floodmagazine.com/15180/imagine- ... us-murphy/.

"Watch as Mick Harvey reveals details of the latest PJ Harvey recording sesssions, his writing process and what fans can expect to hear on his current tour."



- What is your contribution to the record?
- God knows. )))

So, he is hoping to go on tour with Polly, but he doesn't sure yet because she's planning to touring until the middle of 2017 (year and a half?).

Hope Mick makes the tour; it won't be the same without him.

In less than a month we HOPEFULLY will be hearing live recordings of some new songs (rather than a few second clips, I mean), so "to celebrate" I've systemised what we do know about some particular tracks from all of these articles and stuff (well, I did it back in the day, actually, more for myself, but now I've decided to "publish" it):


"Imagine This": first song that she wrote after "Let England Shake" - Feb 2012, "for the Chain Letter project";
"Imagine this: around your eyes/ a rag is tied/ and you're on a track /right hand on the back /of another man";
blindfolded men being led away to a watery grave.

"I'll Be Waiting": she wanted the guitar to be stuttering, in a bid to try and replicate the stuttering of children
suffering from post-war trauma; she wants a young boy to take the lead and that she would shadow him;
based on the poem "The Children" (?).

Some fan even wrote down the lyrics by the ear:
"The Ministry of Social Affairs": provisional title, based upon a poem "The Beggar Girl"; Kabul, Afghanistan -
"See them sitting on the terrain / kneeling by the barricades / no-one smiling, no-one crying / staring straight
back into my eyes"; London - "A million beggars' silhouettes / Near where the money changers sit /
By their locked cabinets";

song is built around a leery old blues song, "That's What They Want" by Jerry McCain & His Upstarts, whose
refrain – "That's what they want / Oh yeah / Money, honey" – Polly sings through an alien vocal effect.



"Guilty": song recounts a drone attack as witnessed through a grainy surveillance screen - "There's a little figure
/ on the television / scratching on the ground / waiting for the moment"; "What’s he doing with that stick? /
Which one is guilty?".

"Homo Sappy Blues": before the recording, it intended to be a potential lead single, but they changed it a lot; note "man to sing"; some lyrics about migration, vodka and tattooed children, also lines like "God sent you" and "what God gave you".

"The Revolving Wheel": "A revolving wheel of metal chains / <...> / Four little children flying out / A blind man sings in Arabic / Now you see them, now you don't / Faces, limbs, <...>"; "Hey little children, don't disappear"; "Don't let them fade out".

"Community Of Hope": based upon a poem "Sight-Seeing, South of the River";
("Here's the Hope & Demolition Project", "and they're gonna put a Walmart here";
song documents Hope VI, the US' flawed project to clear out and replace dilapidated social housing –
and not always with the same number of residences.

"River Anacostia": about predominantly African-American district in Washington DC that was segregated by the
construction of a freeway.

"Throwing Nothing": "At the refreshment stand / a boy throws out his hand / As if to feed the starlings /
but really he throws nothing" - Washington boy scares the starlings away.

"UNHCR" (UN High Commission for Refugees In The Field): "How to stop the murdering? / By now we should have learned"; "What we did / Why we did it / I make no excuse /
I believe in the future we could do some good" (?).

"A Line In The Sand": "Enough is enough, a line in the sand, 7 or 8 thousand people killed by a hand", "I saw people
kill each other just to get there first"; note "clapping".

"The Orange Monkey": "Restlessness took hold my brain / with questions I could not hold back / an orange monkey on
a chain"; "a happy chaos / carried on".

"The Chain Of Keys": "The dusty ground's a dead end track / the neighbour won't be coming back"; "A key so simple
and bright, how can it feel so desperate?"; guitar orchestra and Russian gospel choir, note "swing feel?".

"(All) Near The Memorials To Vietnam And Lincoln": Polly - "I think the bit about the alien children would be good here".

Other titles: A Dog Called Money, The Ministry of Defence, Medicinals, Age of the Dollar, Dollar Dollar, Around Your Eyes, The Boy.


And also a cute, lovely and important (IMO) quote from Polly Jean: "I want songs to remain as singalong-ey as possible. I tried so hard to make them catchy when I was writing them. That's my masterplan."

Wow!

thanks for the summary, kuk. It was hard to keep track

Now we know that song "(All) Near The Memorials To Vietnam And Lincoln" is based upon the poem "Throwing Nothing" (and the latter is not a separate song).

Oh yes, and I found this:

Nominally it's about the book, but really 90% of this article is about "Recording in Progress": http://www.newsweek.com/pj-harvey-explo ... bum-385146.

"The space itself was pristine, save for a series of eerie drawings tacked above the soundboard: two-headed wolves, birds circling in an ominous sky, goats being led to slaughter."

"At that moment, Harvey was laying down a vocal track, and she went back and forth with Flood on whether to use the more “punk” take. Everyone in the room bobbed in a collective headbang to the chorus. Months later, I realize that it’s cribbed directly from the very Hollow poem about Anacostia, titled “Sightseeing, South of the River.” The song is titled “Community of Hope,” and its chorus now rings familiar: “They’re gonna put a Wal-Mart here.”"

"“We had earmarked another four to five weeks in case she needed it,” says Morris, speaking to me over the phone. “But she actually got through the whole very quickly.”"

"Everything in our world is exposed, yet this experiment somehow feels even more voyeuristic than pornography." )))

sorry for gigantic view
this is from ArtAngel updated site https://www.artangel.org.uk/project/rec ... -progress/

here's another pic

Wow, that's great!!

I'm checking "Something & Son" [creators of the glass room] site every day since April or May, but it STILL says "Images information SOON".

Found one more:

And using my "hacker" skills, I found a bigger version:

thank You!

found another one

Image: PJ Harvey and musicians rehearse amongst cables, pedals and instruments including drum kit, saxophone, autoharp and ornate hurdy gurdy in the pristine white recording studio as audience members watch through one-way glass at Somerset House, January, 2015. Photograph: Stephen White
https://www.artangel.org.uk/recording-i ... iographies