Polly Jean Harvey is one of the all-time greats, and she can do whatever she wants. She can make an album of her own, or she can release a truly weird one-off single like "Voyager," the recent track where she sang from the perspective of the Voyager 6 probe. She can collaborate, too.
Harvey's most recent LP I Inside The Old Year Dying came out in 2023, and she doesn't seem to be in any hurry to make a new one. Instead, she sings on new records from a couple of experimental composers. Today, the Iranian-born, Stockholm-based composer Shida Shahabi announced a new album called First Light At Hand.
The lead single is an elemental drone track called "Wreath" that goes on for six and a half minutes. Harvey co-wrote the song with Shababi. She sings on it, and she sounds cool as hell.
Harvey is apparently a longtime fan of Shahabi. A couple of years ago, Harvey curated the Gunnersbury Park Festival and got Shahabi to play it. They met there, and they have been friends ever since.
Here's what Harvey says about "Wreath": When Shida first sent me the piece of music that became "Wreath," I was immediately drawn to its deep, earthy weight and the way it slowly evolved and transformed. It felt like a living organism. I knew Shida wanted the piece to have words, something that she doesn’t often sense, so I had the feeling that she was the one who knew best what the song needed to say.
I asked her to write for me a page of freeform words inspired by the music. I told her the words could be as free as she liked, and didn’t even have to make sense. I used her words as the basis of the song, adding things here and there, and editing it down.
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