PJ Harvey Debuts New Songs and Poems in London

Posted by on Oct 9, 2015 in News | Comments Off

PJ Harvey Debuts New Songs and Poems in London

Photo via Somerset House

Tonight at Royal Festival Hall in London, PJ Harvey and photographer/filmmaker Seamus Murphy staged a multimedia performance called “The Hollow of the Hand” featuring poetry and new songs from Harvey, along with photos and short films by Murphy. Watch clips from the performance below.

“The Hollow of the Hand” is also the title of a new poetry book, which features verse by Harvey and photographs by Murphy. It chronicles Harvey and Murphy’s travels between 2011 and 2014 to Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Washington, D.C. The performance was divided into three sections, one for each place.

Joined by longtime collaborator John Parish, as well as Gallon Drunk’s James Johnston, Harvey debuted ten new songs: “Chain of Keys”, “The Wheel”, “The Orange Monkey”, “Dollar Dollar”, “The Community of Hope”, “Homo Sappy Blues”, “Medicinals”, “Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln”, “River Anacostia”, and “The Ministry of Social Affairs”, which samples Jerry McCain & His Upstarts’ “That’s What They Want”. She played guitar and keyboards.

Harvey also read the poems “Dance on the Mountain”, “The Hand”, “An Initiation”, “The Glass”, “Dead Tanks”, “The First Shot”, “Begging Bowl”, “Talking to God”, “At the Air Base”, “To the Oldest Homosapiens”, and “3 a.m. Washington, D.C.”, among others. (Read the texts of “The Hand” and “On the Corner of 1st and D”, as well as “Where It Begins”, with accompanying photos by Murphy, over at The Guardian.)

Earlier this year, Harvey had been recording a new album in sessions open to the public as part of a London museum exhibition. Harvey sold lyric sheets for the songs “Sight Seeing South of the River”, “Medicinals”, “The Children”, “The Ministry of Social Affairs”, “The Revolving Wheel”, “Imagine This”, “River Anacostia”, and “UNHCR”. The sessions were also filmed by Murphy.

A video posted by Jay Hess (@mmmrhess) onOct 9, 2015 at 1:47pm PDT

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