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Welcome, then, to PJ Harvey’s first album in seven years, a wholly original, often baffling, regularly terrifying and frequently gorgeous set of 12 songs. The only artist to have won the Mercury Prize twice (for 2001’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea and 2011’s Let England Shake), Dorset-born Harvey is one of Britain’s most intriguing and inventive musicians. However when she finished touring her last album (2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project, a “big theme” record that dealt with politics and foreign policy), Harvey admitted to feeling lost, disconnected from music and therefore “heartbroken”. She considered quitting. But her muse returned. I Inside the Old Year Dying is the result. Far from “big theme”, it’s intimate and rootsy.
New Nick Drake Tribute Album Features Liz Phair, Feist
D5: Vocals recorded by Oli Deakin & additional engineering by Iggy B at Bella Union Studios, Strongrooms, LondonAmong the most unexpected delights of last year’s Glastonbury Festival was the storming British debut of Gabriels. It was a hot, drowsy afternoon on the Park Stage and few in the audience would have been die-hard fans – or even knew who the soul and R&B band were. Yet the trio of singer Jacob Lusk, keyboardist Ryan Hope and violinist Ari Balouzian threw quite the coming-out party. I thought about all this whilst up on the long barrow — Marlborough almost within sight away to the east. The twin magnets of Avebury and London perhaps pulling the young man one way and the other, or not. Shy, strange, compelling, gone. Elemental but ineffable — three intimate albums beautifully complete but ripe for analysis and interpretation — what can he have meant? Meanwhile, Fontaines D.C. won Best International Group at the BRITs 2023 last month, with guitarist Carlos O’Connell dedicating the award to his bandmates.
Listen to Fontaines D.C. cover Nick Drake’s ‘Cello Song’
Sunset at West Kennet Long Barrow, Avebury. Solstice eve. A purple thundercloud rages massive beyond the cone of Silbury Hill. The rain passes us by. There is no sunset to be seen but I toast the dusk with tea provided by my friend, Roz. Pulp tea. ‘ I seem to have left an important part of my brain somewhere in a field’ reads the tag — a feeling perhaps familiar to the folk who built and tended the impressive Neolithic chambered tomb beneath us. As the cumulonimbus slugs away to the north, the sky clears and stars kindle in the deep blue heavens.
It doesn’t all work. Some of the lyricism is a little strained, stumbling on its way to Old Testament resonance: “in the valley of the cave/ all that glitters ain’t what it seems.” And perhaps it’s simply over-exposure, but their calling-card singles, Love and Hate in a Different Time and Glory – which so lit up that Glastonbury performance – sound samey in this context. To flip the question, what does he mean today? For an artist whose music is so full of spectral stories and apparitions it’s perhaps no surprise that the listener rarely gets a clear sight of the man himself — the cipher at the centre of the oeuvre allowing devotees to interpret and augment for almost 50 years. The fact that the collection begins with the echoing rave-up of Fontaines D.C.’s ‘Cello Song’ points to the spirit of adventure and reinterpretation which animates so many of the successful readings here. Let’s Eat Grandma’s ‘From The Morning’ is a standout moment — remaking the ache of the original into a cascade of dream-pop; Feist is similarly wonderful on her woozy off-kilter reading of ‘River Man’, the brushed drums recalling something of the hypnotic string-scratch of Drake’s guitar. A big man in an immaculate tux, Lusk’s falsetto floated above a whirling violin and full Gospel choir. Their sound had lush, Biblical depth, but with a funky, danceable groove: it was music to send you to your knees – then get you skanking with abandon. It hit the sleepy audience like the rapture; suddenly, Worthy Farm became a Midwestern Revivalist’s marquee, jitterbugging to an otherworldly rhythm. You half expected to see a young Elvis in the corner, jelly-legged with inspiration.
Listen to Fontaines D.C. Cover Nick Drake Classic ‘Cello Song
Later tonight, huddled up in Avebury proper, air heady with drum & bass and the smell of fire poi paraffin, we’ll drink another cup and my Jarvis tea tarot will read ‘ Two sugars would be great ‘cause I’m fading fast and it’s nearly dawn.’I’m having my first kid in 10 days now,” O’Connell explained. “My heart is fuller than ever, bringing life into this world and making sure that life is full of joy even though this world is hard and difficult.” Vinyl is marketed and mentioned on OBI strip as "Buff" - it is more gray and dark brown colored than traditional buff - tan color. Vinyl is translucent. Now Gabriels – who take their name from a street in Sunderland, where Hope grew up – have released a two-part debut record, Angels & Queens. The first volume dropped in September last year; together, the 13-part record confirms the promise of that miraculous Glastonbury introduction. The Gabriels’ many celebrity admirers include Elton John, this year’s headliner, who declared their single Love and Hate to be “probably one of the most seminal records I’ve heard in the last 10 years”, and brought out Lusk as one of his special guests. Still, Gabriels are making thunderous, thoughtful music with commercial snap. They’re clearly hungry for success – and thoroughly deserve it. Big things await. “Mama, don’t you cry,” sings Lusk on Mama. “Everything’s going to be alright.” Swaddled in Gabriels’ glorious sound, you can’t help but agree: yes, yes, it is. Alex Diggins
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