PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project (Album Review)
Tuesday, 19 April 2016
Written by Laura Johnson
‘The Hope Six Demolition Project’, the follow up to 2011’s Mercury Prize-winning ‘Let England Shake’, has PJ Harvey once again joining creative forces with Seamus Murphy, the war photographer whose work in Afghanistan and Kosovo sparked her fascination with the regions.
The musician’s first poetry book, The Hollow of the Hand, was released in 2015 accompanied by Murphy’s images, with her new record traversing similar ground. Harvey embarked on journeys to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington D.C. over the space of four years, feeling that secondary sources left her “too far removed” from her subjects. “When I’m writing a song I visualise the entire scene,” she said. “I wanted to smell the air, feel the soil and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with.”
The Community of Hope instantly seats us next to Harvey as she travels through D.C. in the Mazda of a Washington Post reporter. They drive past the Hope IV townhouses, built on the site of a violent housing project, and down Benning Road, described as “a well known pathway to death”. “They’re gonna put a Walmart here,” runs the refrain, lifted verbatim from the tour.
It’s a portrayal that the leader of the Community Of Hope non-profit organisation has rebuked as an “incomplete portrait”, but this is the indelible impression that Harvey was left with.
Next on the itinerary is The Ministry Of Defence which, in homage to its title, is led by abrupt chords and military drum rolls. The instrumentation accompanies lyrics that again paint a grim picture, this time of a disused building in Afghanistan where “syringes, razors, a plastic spoon” are left alongside human hair, bone and biro graffiti that declares: “This is how the world will end.”
A Line In The Sand’s falsetto vocals heighten the sense of despair, with its harrowing imagery of a refugee camp ending with a sort of brittle optimism: “We got things wrong, but I believe we also did some good.” It’s short-lived as Chain of Keys searches an empty landscape and realises the desperate situations people find themselves in: “A key so simple and so small, how can it mean no chance at all. A key, a promise or a wish, how can it mean such hopelessness.”
River Anacostia combines a hummed intro with organ accompaniment and is reminiscent of a gospel hymn before, just like the body of water it’s named after, it leads to Washington D.C. for Near The Memorials To Vietnam and Lincoln. With its change of pace and tone, the song illustrates the disparity between where the river begins and ends. The Ministry Of Social Affairs then uses a rock ’n’ roll sample to create a confusingly intense soundscape, with Harvey’s words sketching images of the city’s destitute homeless people.
The Wheel takes us back to Kosovo, specifically to a fairground wheel in KosovoPolje/Fushë Kosovë near the capital Pristina, and conflates a happy, everyday image with the lingering shadow of the loss of young life: “Hey little children don’t disappear, I heard it was 28,000.”
Closer Dollar Dollar puts you, alongside Harvey, at the centre of a busy street scene and with its ambient organ, choirs and irregular heartbeat percussion, manages to capture the chaos perfectly. Harvey finishes the song lost for words as she is confronted by a child beggar. The track may seem like an underwhelming finish but that is just the way journeys, even ones of such importance as these, sometimes end. The world continues to turn.
Though ‘Let England Shake’ saw Harvey collaborate with Murphy and touch on conflict, namely in Iraq and Afghanistan, ‘The Hope Six Demolition Project’ marks her progression to understanding up close the fallout of atrocities she had only previously experienced second hand. The record does well to call on Harvey’s experimental nature, as shown on ‘Let England Shake’, and her ability to write slow-burning earworms, which dates back as far as her ‘Dry’ debut and later ‘Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’.
Instead of the introspection found on previous records, ‘The Hope Six Demolition Project’ sees Harvey, and subsequently the listener, take on the role of observer, which she was on the other side of when she recorded the album during her month-long Recording In Progress residency at Somerset House. The result is a uniquely conceived record expertly executed.
PJ Harvey Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Mon June 27 2016 - ST AUSTELL Eden Sessions
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