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CMU Approved
Approved: PJ Harvey – The Wheel
By Andy Malt | Published on Monday 25 January 2016
What’s PJ Harvey up to in that box? That’s what we were all wondering, wasn’t it? When she was in that box – aka a glass-fronted room at Somerset House in London – last year. Of course we knew she was recording her new album, she’d told us as much, but that’s not really enough information when it comes to an artist like PJ Harvey, is it?
More recently we’ve received further details. The record was inspired by trips to places like Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, DC. Song titles suggest a political leaning to the record. And now comes the first single, ‘The Wheel’, which shed’s yet more light on the project.
A thread definitely runs to the track from 2011’s ‘Let England Shake’ album, but while that record looked at war and Englishness, this project certainly casts a wider net. And lyrically Harvey remains unflinching, singing of a “tableau of the missing tied to the government building”. And again she manages to do this in a musically accessible way.
Listen to ‘The Wheel’ here:
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