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. We discussed the need for simplicity and for a cyclical nature – a sense of life and death, of beginning and ending, as we see in the living world around us.
I kept my melodic line very simple and repetitive to marry with the slow changes in the music. It took us a while to figure out what needed to happen at the end of the piece, but I love how Shida has looped my vocal and used it as she would an instrument sample.
I’m proud to be a part of this unique and mesmerising new album.
And here's what Shahabi says:
This was one of the first pieces that I started working on for this album, recording overtones with slow progressions, which became the foundation of this work. It was pretty early on that I felt that the music was made as a piece for someone else to step in and do something with, and it all came naturally together with friend and wonderful artist, PJ Harvey, who I first met in London two years ago.
Polly had me write words in a freeform way during the process of this track. A pattern developed and Polly wrote and recorded something beautiful out of that. It’s been such a special and meaningful process, working with this piece. I’m in awe of the dedication and care that has been put into this track. Heart is full.
Check out "Wreath" below.
Harvey recently put in work with another composer, too. OIiver Leith, the British musician whose works include the Kurt Cobain-inspired opera Last Days, released an album called Doom And The Dooms last month. Leith recorded it with Sean Shibe, GBSR Duo, and 12 Ensemble, and it was supposedly "recreated from tapes found at a garage sale." Harvey makes multiple contributions to the record. Here's what she says about it:
From the first moment I heard Doom And The Dooms on the radio as a child, their music went inside me. I was inspired to get closer to what it is that they were. They had a melancholic longing within their songs – songs full of sadness, but also of joy. I feel my own work has been trying to replicate that feeling ever since.
Hear the album below.
First Light At Hand is out 3/5 on Still Light. Doom And The Dooms is out now on PLATOON Ltd.
