Today, PJ Harvey releases her new album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, via Island Records. Spotify users can stream it below. It’s also available over at Apple Music.
Spanning 11 tracks, the LP serves as Harvey’s ninth to date following 2011’s Let England Shake. It was recorded in sessions that were open to the public as part of an exhibition in London last year. As a press release notes, the full-length chronicles a “unique artistic journey which took her to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C.” It’s presumably named after a plan by the U.S. Department Of Housing And Urban Development to revitalize public housing projects.
“When I’m writing a song I visualise the entire scene,” Harvey explained in a statement. “I can see the colours, I can tell the time of day, I can sense the mood, I can see the light changing, the shadows moving, everything in that picture. Gathering information from secondary sources felt too far removed for what I was trying to write about. I wanted to smell the air, feel the soil and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with.”
In his review of the album, Adam Kivel writes:
“If PJ Harvey’s intention for her new album was to get people talking, then The Hope Six Demolition Project is an unqualified success. That’s what happens when a famous rock star travels the world, observing war-torn, poverty-stricken, tragic, and otherwise profoundly different places and using those observations for a seemingly political album.”
Purchase a copy of the LP here.
The Hope Six Demolition Project Tracklist:
01. The Community of Hope
02. The Ministry of Defence
03. A Line in the Sand
04. Chain of Keys
05. River Anacostia
06. Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln
07. The Orange Monkey
08. Medicinals
09. The Ministry of Social Affairs
10. The Wheel
11. Dollar, Dollar
