In April, PJ Harvey announced her first new album since 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project. The excellently titled I Inside The Old Year Dying will be out next month via Partisan, and we’ve already written about its lead single, “A Child’s Question, August.” Today, Polly Jean Harvey is sharing “I Inside The Old I Dying” and an accompanying animated music video directed by Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña.

Here’s what Harvey had to say about “I Inside the Old I Dying”:

This delicate and beautiful song eluded us until the very last day in the studio. Over the previous five weeks we had tried so many times to capture it and failed, and/but then John reinvented the feel of the guitar pattern. As he was demonstrating it in the control room, Flood handed me a microphone and pressed record whilst I sat next to John trying to work out how to sing to it. The result somehow captures the ethereal and melancholic longing I was looking for. In the lyric everyone is waiting for the savior to reappear – everyone and everything anticipates the arrival of this figure of love and transformation. There is a sense of sexual longing and awakening and of moving from one realm into another – from child to adult, from life to death and the eternal.

Directors Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña add about its video: “We envisioned the video as a short story about love, death, and resurrection. We imagined that the video can be seen as a little fairy tale and also as an intimate ritual. We wanted to keep the animation in a state of scenic and material rawness, as if the elements we see are not characters or props, but artifacts and talismans that are part of a ceremony.”

Watch and listen below.

TOUR DATES:
09/22 – Dublin, Ireland @ 3Olympia Theatre
09/23 – Dublin, Ireland @ 3Olympia Theatre
09/25 – Glasgow, UK @ Barrowland
09/26 – Glasgow, UK @ Barrowland
09/28 – London, UK @ Roundhouse
09/29 – London, UK @ Roundhouse
10/02 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall
10/03 – Manchester, UK @ Albert Hall
10/06 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso
10/07 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Paradiso
10/09 – Brussels, Belgium @ Cirque Royal
10/10 – Brussels, Belgium @ Cirque Royal
10/12 – Paris, France @ Olympia
10/13 – Paris, France @ Olympia
10/15 – Zurich, Switzerland @ Volkshaus
10/16 – Zurich, Switzerland @ Volkshaus
10/18 – Prague, Czech Republic @ Velký sál Lucerna
10/19 – Prague, Czech Republic @ Velký sál Lucerna
10/21 – Berlin, Germany @ Admiralspalast
10/22 – Berlin, Germany @ Admiralspalast
10/24 – Warsaw, Poland @ Palladium
10/25 – Warsaw, Poland @ Palladium
10/27 – Copenhagen, Denmark @ Falkonersalen
10/28 – Copenhagen, Denmark @ Falkonersalen
10/30 – Oslo, Norway @ Sentrum Scene
10/31 – Oslo, Norway @ Sentrum Scene

I Inside The Old Year Dying is out 7/7 on Partisan.