Speaker 1: Pushkin. Polly Jeene Harvey, better known as PJ Harvey, is
Speaker 1: without question one of my favorite songwriters of all time.
Speaker 1: Her debut album Dry came out in ninety three. It
Speaker 1: is what the La Times called a near instant classic.
Speaker 1: The same with her sophomore release, rid of Me, which
Speaker 1: became an inspiration for Navana's last album, in Utero. Ten
Speaker 1: albums later, and Polly continues to be not only a
Speaker 1: remarkable songwriter on her new album Eye inside the old
Speaker 1: You're Dying, but maybe more impressively, continues to find new
Speaker 1: musical territory and new voices to write from, keeping her
Speaker 1: songs and artistry as interesting as they were when she
Speaker 1: first put out music over thirty years ago. John Parrish,
Speaker 1: who's been a frequent collaborator of Polly since the eighties,
Speaker 1: produced the new album along with Flood, and joins me
Speaker 1: in conversation with Polly to discuss their process of working together,
Speaker 1: beauty of Polly's last few albums, and how they bonded
Speaker 1: a long time ago over Captain b Fire. This is
Speaker 1: broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond.
Speaker 1: Here's my conversation with PJ Harvey and John Parrish. I'm
Speaker 1: very excited to be able to talk to both of you.
Speaker 1: I don't always think about you guys in Unison, so
Speaker 1: it was fun to sort of think about how you
Speaker 1: guys worked together on these things. But you guys met
Speaker 1: in the eighties, which I didn't realize was the case.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 2: We met in the in nineteen eighty seven, I believe.
Speaker 1: And it was through your band, John.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it was. It was the guitar player in
Speaker 2: my band, Jeremy Hogg, had met Polly at a party
Speaker 2: and she'd been singing some songs and he was really
Speaker 2: impressed with the only mentioned he mentioned her to May
Speaker 2: and then she came to a couple of gigs of
Speaker 2: the band and gave me some tapes songs she was.
Speaker 2: She was a teenager and her voice already sounded really
Speaker 2: great to me back at that time, so I asked
Speaker 2: if she wanted to join the band when she left school.
Speaker 3: I think you did it audition me, sort of sort
Speaker 3: of auditioned me first.
Speaker 2: It was it was a sham audition because you're definitely what.
Speaker 3: I came up to Bristol, didn't I. And we just
Speaker 3: we played through some of your band automatic the Meani's
Speaker 3: main riffs. I think you were just listening to see
Speaker 3: if I could play the riff with feel or not,
Speaker 3: because I wasn't a very adept guitar player at that point.
Speaker 3: I could play chords, but I wasn't very adept at
Speaker 3: anything else, and a lot of John's music was based
Speaker 3: more around melodies than chord structures. So I remember playing
Speaker 3: through some melodies on the guitar with you. John. I
Speaker 3: think you were just trying to see if I could
Speaker 3: play with feel or not. In fact, I often talked
Speaker 3: about feel, you know, just when I'm talking about music,
Speaker 3: because I think the feel that I play with is
Speaker 3: what I learned from John, because we often recognize how
Speaker 3: similar we'd play. If I've written a part on the
Speaker 3: guitar and I'm asking John to play it for live performance,
Speaker 3: he plays it just like me. But that's because I
Speaker 3: play like him, because he play finding a circle like that.
Speaker 1: So you don't think before that audition or that time
Speaker 1: you started playing with automatic meaning that you played, your
Speaker 1: playing was different before then you think, well, I.
Speaker 3: Was just I hadn't been playing guitar for very long,
Speaker 3: and so all I could play was chords on the guitar.
Speaker 3: I could play saxophone quite well, and I think I'd
Speaker 3: got to grade seven on saxophone, but I'd only just
Speaker 3: started playing the guitar, and all I knew was chords
Speaker 3: that I learned from songbook, and I didn't really pick
Speaker 3: out melodies. But then when I met John, I started
Speaker 3: learning about fingerpicking melodies, and then I practice with records
Speaker 3: at home a lot of those with things that John
Speaker 3: had introduced me to, like Captain Beefhart, things like that.
Speaker 1: Damn, wow, you were put Captain bee Far.
Speaker 4: It's a lot to ask of like a sixteen, seventeen,
Speaker 4: eighteen year old that I'm still trying to crack. Like
Speaker 4: I got seen as milk, I can get it as milk,
Speaker 4: and then it goes behind that and still breaks my brain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had had high expectations, which which she which
Speaker 2: she she always met, So it was.
Speaker 1: So that must have been the kind of stuff John
Speaker 1: that you were Really you're kind of like go to.
Speaker 2: I guess Captain beef stuff has been for years and years,
Speaker 2: you know, the years obviously an absolute one off in
Speaker 2: what he's done, and it's very difficult to get tired
Speaker 2: of listening to him because you're always finding something new.
Speaker 2: You know, I've been listening to those records for forty
Speaker 2: years and there's still ill still think, oh, I suddenly
Speaker 2: see how that works. Because a lot of it to
Speaker 2: me was just like a a weird puzzle. That was
Speaker 2: how I got interested in the first place, because I
Speaker 2: didn't understand it, and I thought I understood music. And
Speaker 2: when I first said kept in b fhar, I thought,
Speaker 2: I don't know what's going on here. I can't figure
Speaker 2: out who's saying, why they're doing it. Nothing made sense.
Speaker 2: But I was kind of interested enough to keep listening
Speaker 2: because I realized it had a physical effect on me,
Speaker 2: and I had a physical effect on other people that
Speaker 2: were listening to it as well.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just that it was like bizarre that
Speaker 1: it was that you didn't understand it, but you could
Speaker 1: feel it still.
Speaker 2: I felt that there was something there. It was like
Speaker 2: hearing a foreign language and you're not not knowing what's
Speaker 2: going on, and then you listen to it enough times
Speaker 2: and gradually, like there's some words, you think, oh, I
Speaker 2: know what that word is, and you know you can
Speaker 2: put a couple of sentences together. And it was really
Speaker 2: like that. I gradually got to understand it in a
Speaker 2: way just by listening to it. And there are still
Speaker 2: things that I'm discovering now, So absolutely still go to
Speaker 2: May for sure.
Speaker 1: That's great. So before trout Mask Replica Parli, like, what
Speaker 1: was before that awakening? What was would have been the
Speaker 1: things that you were really loving to listen to at
Speaker 1: that time.
Speaker 3: Oh, I remember loving the Pogues at that time and
Speaker 3: the little band that I had, which was only a
Speaker 3: three tiny, three piece band. It was me on an
Speaker 3: acoustic guitar, a girl on a flute and a penny
Speaker 3: whistle friend of mine called Catherine, and this guy called
Speaker 3: Gus on the bass, and we used to do a
Speaker 3: lot of folk covers. I think when John came to
Speaker 3: see me, that's what I was doing in the local pub.
Speaker 3: But so I loved things like the Post because I
Speaker 3: could hear that it was folk music, which I loved,
Speaker 3: but it also had rebellion and spirit and punk. And
Speaker 3: then I fell in love with the Pixies as well,
Speaker 3: and they were a huge influence on me. I think
Speaker 3: John knew. I think you introduced me to Nick Cave
Speaker 3: in the Bad Seas because I remember you playing Cabin Fever.
Speaker 3: You know what you were just describing about chout Mass Replica.
Speaker 3: I remember listening to that going, I don't know what
Speaker 3: this is and it made me feel seasick. I just
Speaker 3: didn't know what I was listening too. And you played
Speaker 3: me from Her to Eternity as well, and then I
Speaker 3: really got into Nick Cave in the Bad Seats and
Speaker 3: Tom Waits. I don't think I knew weights, and then
Speaker 3: John introduced me to that and that was a massive
Speaker 3: influence on me. So I had this sort of mixture
Speaker 3: of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, the Pixies, Captain b Phart,
Speaker 3: and then my mum and dad's collection of records, which
Speaker 3: was brilliant, mostly Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. It's
Speaker 3: all sort of off sot with that.
Speaker 1: I love it. I can. I can hear that feel
Speaker 1: and you're playing that there's some stones in there, some
Speaker 1: stones in the Pies. You mentioned your sax plane when
Speaker 1: you're growing up playing sax in Endorset, like, is it
Speaker 1: a jazz ensemble or is it more as part of
Speaker 1: like a like a brass ensemble in the classical sense.
Speaker 3: Well, my mum and my dad were always very into music,
Speaker 3: so much so that they had a group of friends
Speaker 3: that were London based that started introducing them to rhythm
Speaker 3: and blues bands from London that my mom started then
Speaker 3: bringing those bands down to play in the local village
Speaker 3: tools in our village areas. So we'd end up with
Speaker 3: these rhythm and blues and boogie woogie bands staying with
Speaker 3: us nearly every weekend and some great players. And that's
Speaker 3: when I thought, oh, I really loved saxophone. And then
Speaker 3: they'd start giving me ad hoc lessons on the saxophone
Speaker 3: when they're staying and I started learning at school, so
Speaker 3: that's how that happened. And then I joined the local
Speaker 3: big band. So I was second tenor in a big
Speaker 3: band for quite a few years, which I love because
Speaker 3: you play all those big band standards Wow Wellington and
Speaker 3: you know, played some amazing songs and I learned a
Speaker 3: lot about structure and parts and being one of a
Speaker 3: whole from doing the big band work.
Speaker 1: Were you interested in big band music?
Speaker 3: Not really, No, I wasn't much more into track mass replica,
Speaker 3: but playing in a big band because I guess you know,
Speaker 3: in the way that I love playing in the current
Speaker 3: band we're in. You just learn about listening. You learn
Speaker 3: about listening to each other and you learn about playing
Speaker 3: off of the feel that you're all creating. Then that
Speaker 3: changes all the time. That's what makes it so exciting.
Speaker 1: I was listening to I think you're on it too, John,
Speaker 1: But you did a Ian Stewart tribute. You guys did
Speaker 1: a Lonely Avenue.
Speaker 3: John wasn't on. I was. I did that with my cousin.
Speaker 1: You and your cousin that John might have been on.
Speaker 1: You said, it's so natural doing that.
Speaker 3: So my mum's brother's son, my cousin Ben Waters, he's
Speaker 3: a boogie with pianist, and he became a boogie we
Speaker 3: be peers because he loved seeing Ian Stewart play.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 3: Ian Stewart was often known as the fifth rolling Stone
Speaker 3: or sixth sixth rolling Stone, and well he was. He
Speaker 3: was always in the background. I mean, rumor has it
Speaker 3: that he wasn't in the Stones because he didn't look
Speaker 3: right right. But he was always with the Stones and
Speaker 3: he ended up being their road manager and he played
Speaker 3: on stage with them a lot. You'll often see him
Speaker 3: in the background now. He was a great friend of
Speaker 3: mom and dads. He influenced my cousin to want to
Speaker 3: play boogy boogy piano So now my cousin Ben Waters
Speaker 3: is a professional boogie boogie pianist and he put together
Speaker 3: this tribute to Ian Stewart and that's how that happened.
Speaker 1: So was Ian Stewart around then? Like was he one
Speaker 1: of the exactly?
Speaker 3: You know? I said, my mom and dad had a
Speaker 3: group of friends from London. I'll try and keep it simple,
Speaker 3: but so down here in Dorset where we live, it's
Speaker 3: a very very beautiful part of the countryside with rolling
Speaker 3: hills and an incredible coastline that's now become like a
Speaker 3: World Heritage site. It's called the Jurassic Coast. So people
Speaker 3: from London would just come here every weekend. One of
Speaker 3: them had a flat in this little cove and all
Speaker 3: of the people from London will come here just because
Speaker 3: it was so beautiful to escape London. And mom and dad,
Speaker 3: who lived down here already met those people. One of
Speaker 3: those people that used to come down every weekend was
Speaker 3: Ian Stewart. He was the one that introduced mum and
Speaker 3: dad to all of these bands from London that ended
Speaker 3: up coming down to play. And one of all bands
Speaker 3: was Ian's band, which was called Rocket eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Right right, which would I guess would have been based
Speaker 1: on that. I turned it song from way back when
Speaker 1: growing when you've seen him, did you know he's part
Speaker 1: of the Rolling Stone and maybe the founder of the
Speaker 1: Stones too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah we did, and me and my brother and
Speaker 3: because Charlie Watts came down and Charlie played in Rocket
Speaker 3: eighty eight, you see, So Charlie Charlie ended up coming
Speaker 3: and staying in our house. And I remember my brother
Speaker 3: and I following him around because we knew that he
Speaker 3: was famous, so we just followed him around the house
Speaker 3: the entire time, followed Garden, followed him every where.
Speaker 1: Did you ever talk to him after following him?
Speaker 3: I h I think maybe a little bit. We were
Speaker 3: a bit shy because we were quite young. Then.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a crazy experience. I love Charlie Watts.
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out. I feel like the
Speaker 1: last decade or so has been a really fruitful I
Speaker 1: seem to have read that it was a little difficult maybe,
Speaker 1: but a really fruitful run of records from like Let
Speaker 1: England Shake to Eye Inside the Old Year of Dying.
Speaker 1: I mean, just the three records that have come out
Speaker 1: in that time have just been really moving and interesting.
Speaker 1: But I was thinking about you guys' earliest work compared
Speaker 1: to this, and I mean, how does your guys' creative
Speaker 1: relationship work this well over time? I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: insane that you guys are sort of still seemingly, to
Speaker 1: the listener's point of view, like in lockstep creatively.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's quite rare to
Speaker 2: be a good creative relationship for that many years. I
Speaker 2: think we're both really appreciative of that. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: not something that you can make happen. It's either there
Speaker 2: or it's not. And I think that we've been lucky
Speaker 2: that we've, for whatever reason, creatively developed along similar lines
Speaker 2: or parallel lines for a long time. But we've always
Speaker 2: kind of understood what each other's doing, and we know
Speaker 2: each other's parameters really well. So it's very easy to
Speaker 2: judge things you know for each other and accept judgment
Speaker 2: from each other because we understand the parameters. We also
Speaker 2: trust each other implicitly, and that's again, it's not something
Speaker 2: that you can make happen. It's either there or it's not.
Speaker 2: And again, we're really appreciative that we have that because
Speaker 2: it just feels like when we're working together in the studio,
Speaker 2: and particularly when we're working with Flood as well. He's
Speaker 2: obviously been a part of all of those records. It
Speaker 2: feels like a very an incredibly strong creative unit. It
Speaker 2: creates a situation where people are not afraid to take
Speaker 2: chances and not afraid to take risks, and we know
Speaker 2: that there will always be somebody there to either support
Speaker 2: it or to say, actually that's not working, but maybe
Speaker 2: it's a route to something else. And it is afraid.
Speaker 2: You know, we're not worried about trying something and not
Speaker 2: working and then somebody thinking then they're not really very good.
Speaker 2: You know. We know that we have great respect for
Speaker 2: each other, the terrific trust, and that's been absolutely foundational
Speaker 2: to the work. I think, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean I completely agree with John. I think it's having
Speaker 3: that level of trust because we've known each other for
Speaker 3: a long time and we've been through a lot together, myself,
Speaker 3: John arm Flood, and so then you can just be
Speaker 3: so open, you can be so risk taking and come
Speaker 3: up with crazy ideas and we'll have a go at
Speaker 3: them anyway, and then a lot of them fall down
Speaker 3: and theyre rubbish and we just laugh about it because
Speaker 3: and the other thing is We do laugh a lot.
Speaker 3: We have a similar sense of humors. We spend a
Speaker 3: lot of time laughing and that really helps. And we
Speaker 3: don't have egos in the sense of needing to hold
Speaker 3: on to some precious idea. We just let it go
Speaker 3: and we try something else. So it makes for a
Speaker 3: really wonderful inspirational collaboration. You're just constantly firing ideas off
Speaker 3: each other.
Speaker 1: After this break, we'll be back with more of our
Speaker 1: conversation with John Parrish and the One and Only PJ. Harvey.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from John Parrish and PJ. Harvey.
Speaker 1: Speaking of like being open to ideas, the demos to
Speaker 1: Let England Shape were really fascinating. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: you singing, not even singing, but you writing songs over
Speaker 1: samples of things. Yeah, which is a really wild idea.
Speaker 1: I've never heard demos that sound that way. How did
Speaker 1: you start demoing songs that way for that record?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the first time I'd done that. It
Speaker 3: was going back to feel. It was some pieces of
Speaker 3: music I loved the feel of, but also the words
Speaker 3: were absolutely right for the words and the lyrics I
Speaker 3: was creating, so I only used loops of things that
Speaker 3: resonated with the subject matter of the song, so that
Speaker 3: made for a really strong combination. And then some of
Speaker 3: those loops we did use in the eventual recording, and
Speaker 3: some of them we didn't, or some of them we
Speaker 3: just referenced, but we used parts of on So it
Speaker 3: was just a good launching pad for me as I
Speaker 3: was trying to find my way into what I was writing.
Speaker 3: And you can also hear on the demos I was
Speaker 3: mapping out vocal ideas as well, because I knew I
Speaker 3: wanted lots of additional singers. But it's very interesting to hear.
Speaker 3: How then those demos then moved into the final recordings
Speaker 3: and that changed quite a bit. John, I don't know
Speaker 3: if you want to say about I think our environment
Speaker 3: just being in each church had a big impact.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it did. It was a great session. The
Speaker 2: demos were really interesting. We didn't want to use like
Speaker 2: whole loops going through all the tracks, you know, and
Speaker 2: so we approach in different ways, either sometimes replaying some things,
Speaker 2: replaying little bits and pieces of them, or using sort
Speaker 2: of segments instead. But it was such a strong body
Speaker 2: of songs and lyrically, it was a big departure for Polly.
Speaker 1: Well, and how do you view that as someone who's
Speaker 1: worked alongside her for so long?
Speaker 2: You know, I have to say when Police first said
Speaker 2: that she was writing an album of songs loosely about war,
Speaker 2: I was a little bit nervous as to how she
Speaker 2: was going to pull that off, because I think that's
Speaker 2: act an incredibly difficult thing to do in an artistically
Speaker 2: successful way. As soon as I heard the first three
Speaker 2: or four demos, I was like, Okay, these are great.
Speaker 2: She's totally going to do it. And it tears a
Speaker 2: tremendously press his piece of writing. All the songs on
Speaker 2: that record. When we came to record them, it was
Speaker 2: the most open that Polly had been in a recording situation.
Speaker 2: And I don't know whether that was just the time
Speaker 2: of the development as an artist, the development of Polly's
Speaker 2: a human being, or the fact that the songs were
Speaker 2: very much the third person up until that time. You
Speaker 2: could say there was a degree. Well, certainly people would
Speaker 2: interpret most of the songs before that as being Polly
Speaker 2: writing the first person, even if they weren't, whereas this
Speaker 2: group of songs you do absolutely couldn't. I suppose you
Speaker 2: could try and glean some kind of idea what she
Speaker 2: might think about historical events or current events, and how
Speaker 2: she was timed the two together. But for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: in that session, Polly was incredibly open to the process.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was also to do with being very confident
Speaker 2: in the material. The songs came together very very quickly
Speaker 2: in a beautiful space. It was a big open space
Speaker 2: church where we could all play at the same time,
Speaker 2: and literally every day we would start a new song
Speaker 2: and we wouldn't really know how it was going to
Speaker 2: work out. We wouldn't even know who was going to
Speaker 2: play what instrument, you know, whether Mick would be playing
Speaker 2: drums or whether I would be playing drums, and then
Speaker 2: the other one of us would be playing either guitar
Speaker 2: or keepers or Poly might be playing guitar or auto harp.
Speaker 2: It was really, this is the song. It's a great song,
Speaker 2: let's see where we can take it. And by the
Speaker 2: end of each day pretty much the song had really
Speaker 2: found its own direction. It was a really tremendous session.
Speaker 1: Does that feel true to you probably in terms of
Speaker 1: this feeling like this writing being a little bit different
Speaker 1: than your other writing before it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. I remember after White Chalk I just knew
Speaker 3: I needed to find a completely vibrant and exciting new
Speaker 3: path for myself, and I didn't know what that was,
Speaker 3: and it took quite a lot time to find it.
Speaker 3: And anything I write about, I've got to feel very
Speaker 3: deeply emotionally connected to it or very moved by it.
Speaker 3: And I can remember at that time that England was
Speaker 3: involved in the Afghan War and the Iraq War, and
Speaker 3: I think I was just watching a program, a documentary
Speaker 3: about one soldier who'd been wounded in the war in Afghanistan,
Speaker 3: and I just found it so incredibly upsetting. I just
Speaker 3: remember this whole night feeling so upset, and I thought,
Speaker 3: you should write about that if you're feeling this upset.
Speaker 3: I think I was crying, you know, right like that,
Speaker 3: right about that, And that's how I thought, how can
Speaker 3: I write about that? And that's how it began. How
Speaker 3: how do you do that? So that was the starting point,
Speaker 3: and I think I learned a lot from that moment,
Speaker 3: because I think every album I've done since then, I
Speaker 3: have really thought the area that I'm trying to explore
Speaker 3: has to have a lot of meaning for me and
Speaker 3: has to really move me in order to really write
Speaker 3: good work.
Speaker 1: That moving from this is what I should write about?
Speaker 1: To how do I write about it? To actually then
Speaker 1: having written about it before you got anything you felt
Speaker 1: was good? Were there are like a lot of failed
Speaker 1: attempts to write well.
Speaker 3: LANGL and Shake Again was the first time that I
Speaker 3: wrote words firstly alone on a page with no music.
Speaker 3: Prior to that, I'd always created songs in tandem, music
Speaker 3: and lyrics together. They'd grow with each other, and sometimes
Speaker 3: words would grow out of just chanting rhythmically on top
Speaker 3: of a riff that I had on the piano or guitar.
Speaker 3: But this time, because of what John said, like how
Speaker 3: you know it's such a difficult subject, how on earth
Speaker 3: you're going to approach that, I knew I had to
Speaker 3: get the words right, at least a semblance of them
Speaker 3: being right. First is that I couldn't just improvise words
Speaker 3: on top of music.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 3: I had to think really carefully about what I was saying.
Speaker 3: It was a very fine line to tread. And there
Speaker 3: were a lot of words written. I lot it for,
Speaker 3: you know, the songs that made it on the album,
Speaker 3: and a lot of them never came to anything. And
Speaker 3: that's the other thing that was the first time I
Speaker 3: started moving into poetry, and I started taking poetry lessons
Speaker 3: that I wouldn't call letting is not poetry their songs.
Speaker 3: But it was where my interest in wanting to learn
Speaker 3: the craft of poetry began because as a starting point,
Speaker 3: I went and read all the First World War poets
Speaker 3: and I could see this magical craft that they had,
Speaker 3: and I wanted to learn how do you do that?
Speaker 3: So that was the first time I really thought, oh,
Speaker 3: I can't want to go into this, and then I
Speaker 3: moved into it deeper with Hope six and then with
Speaker 3: Iro Inside the Old Year.
Speaker 1: Were you reading a lot of World War One histories
Speaker 1: as well?
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and contemporary war the time, like Afghan Iraqi war.
Speaker 1: And before this documentary, there was no interest in war,
Speaker 1: no personal interest in war.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: No, No, always in you know, very engaged with what
Speaker 3: was happening in the world, very upset by current conflicts.
Speaker 3: Always fascinated too by the history of Afghanistan, and I
Speaker 3: always felt drawn to that and Britain's involvement in both
Speaker 3: world wars. So no, I was very interested. It just
Speaker 3: never occurred to me that I could possibly write about it.
Speaker 3: I just didn't be qualified, you know. But you have to.
Speaker 3: I think there's a way in that you don't have
Speaker 3: to be qualified, but you can still walk the right
Speaker 3: line of speaking in a very naive way. I mean
Speaker 3: often think of William Blake's Songs of Innocence Experience, because
Speaker 3: that tiny little book is basically how to live, you know,
Speaker 3: but it's written like children's nursery rhymes. So I think
Speaker 3: you can write in a really naive way but still
Speaker 3: say an awful lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, even just you know, it's funny. The sample
Speaker 1: on the demo of let England Shape is stambul not Constantinople,
Speaker 1: which was like a kind of a goof of a
Speaker 1: song in a way. But even that song is kind
Speaker 1: of seen a lot in it's a weird way, you know,
Speaker 1: like these histories of countries conquering one another in name
Speaker 1: changes and what's in a name and what they mean.
Speaker 1: It's I don't know, that's interesting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's what I love doing, playing off what
Speaker 3: the original loop was doing and then laying my words
Speaker 3: on top of it, sometimes joining in with those words,
Speaker 3: sometimes not. I think it also added a certain level
Speaker 3: of humor where it's not too self important. It's got
Speaker 3: a lightness to it. Which in having that lightness, it
Speaker 3: actually makes it heavier. It makes it mean more and
Speaker 3: affect more.
Speaker 1: Tell me about that. You guys recorded in a church
Speaker 1: and in Dorset. It was at the first time you
Speaker 1: got I said, recorded there. How did you guys settle
Speaker 1: on that place as a makesift studio.
Speaker 2: I think it was Polly didn't want to record in
Speaker 2: a studio in a traditional studio setting, and I guess
Speaker 2: it made sense to her because it was close to
Speaker 2: where she was living at the time, and it was
Speaker 2: kind of that simple in a way, like looking for
Speaker 2: a space that was close to where Polly lived, this
Speaker 2: was available. I think we had some concerns as to
Speaker 2: how it would be acoustically, but you know what, we
Speaker 2: moved a studio set up in there and it sounded great.
Speaker 2: It was a really just really cool space.
Speaker 3: It was quite quite magical as well, I felt, and
Speaker 3: I think we all felt that because it's on the
Speaker 3: top of the hill that overlooks the sea, and there's
Speaker 3: not really any any other buildings around it, and it's
Speaker 3: often very windy, so the trees were all bent by
Speaker 3: the wind, and the gravestones are still there. So we
Speaker 3: were singing these songs about death and war, and it
Speaker 3: felt like the wind was kind of blowing the voices
Speaker 3: in from the sea and the graves all over us.
Speaker 3: I do feel like there was something quite magical happening
Speaker 3: in that building, in that that Let England Shake session
Speaker 3: recording was one of the most special times of my
Speaker 3: life for that reason. It was just absolutely magical and
Speaker 3: so inspired and so exciting.
Speaker 1: Do either of you feel particularly religious or spiritual or
Speaker 1: have any affinity for a connection to at a personal
Speaker 1: level churches or a church?
Speaker 2: And I'm not religious, but I grew up going to
Speaker 2: church as a kid, And you know, obviously there's the
Speaker 2: fact that those buildings mean a lot to so many people.
Speaker 2: You know, you can't help but notice that and be
Speaker 2: infected by it. Yeah, So I have respect for it
Speaker 2: without without having faced myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so interested in what different people are drawn to.
Speaker 3: I feel the beauty of those beautiful buildings, but also
Speaker 3: beauty in the fact that people want to come together
Speaker 3: to try and find meaning and try and share and
Speaker 3: to give and receive love and places where beautiful music
Speaker 3: is created and shared. So I'd keep an open mind,
Speaker 3: you know. And I often feel removed when I'm at
Speaker 3: places of worship. As I was in Eap Church when
Speaker 3: we were making Let England Shake. I did feel that
Speaker 3: the beauty of the building and its position helped us
Speaker 3: channel a perfect energy for that record.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Quite poor. I mean, you know, I just think
Speaker 1: about myself. There's a church right down the street from
Speaker 1: where I live, assignment particularly beautiful church, but enough that
Speaker 1: when I passed it, it makes me feel I'm, like, you know,
Speaker 1: feel on some level drawn to it. But at the
Speaker 1: same time I can't help but think about you know,
Speaker 1: it's the pain that sometimes that's the same beliefs bring
Speaker 1: to people, et cetera. And so there's kind of I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just like a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: for me, a very contradictory feeling about churches, like a
Speaker 1: deep reverence and it's an't their aunt'spiring in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways, And I'm very much jealous of these people. Do,
Speaker 1: like you say, come together to find some level of
Speaker 1: meaning in life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I said, I the power of people wanting
Speaker 3: to come together to try and find meaning. Why this
Speaker 3: In Afghanistan, I went to a Sufi It wasn't even
Speaker 3: a church, it was just a room, but it was
Speaker 3: their Sufi Sunday morning practice together where they'd sit for
Speaker 3: four hours chanting together, kneeling down and chanting till they
Speaker 3: were rocking back this and fores. It was incredibly moving
Speaker 3: in a different way. But again it's just the power
Speaker 3: of people coming together. I think to look for something
Speaker 3: to share, something to find the power together.
Speaker 1: After this last break, we'll be back with more from
Speaker 1: John Parrish and PJ. Harvey. We're back with the rest
Speaker 1: of my conversation with John Parrish and PJ. Harvey. You
Speaker 1: referenced a trip to Afghanistan. You know, the whole sixth
Speaker 1: Demolition project was the record after Let England Shake and
Speaker 1: before your Guys's newest one inside the Old Year Dying.
Speaker 1: You traveled around with Seamus Murphy, a great photographer, want
Speaker 1: to Afghanistan, coast of Ops DC. Were you intending to
Speaker 1: make a record based on those travels or was the
Speaker 1: travel something completely separate.
Speaker 3: I didn't know what it would become. I started working
Speaker 3: with Seamus on letting in shiks. He made the beautiful
Speaker 3: films that accompanied each song, and he took photographs and
Speaker 3: I grew a friendship with Seamus. And you know, Seamus
Speaker 3: has spent his whole life as a voter journalist, traveling
Speaker 3: all over the world and sometimes into very dangerous war
Speaker 3: torn areas, and from the interest I'd added from writing
Speaker 3: letting in shake, I still didn't feel close enough, and
Speaker 3: I thought, gosh, what if I could actually in instead
Speaker 3: of garnering information secondhand or from other people's writings, Well,
Speaker 3: if I could actually go somewhere myself. And James and
Speaker 3: I talked about that and he did say, well, look,
Speaker 3: why don't as a start, why don't you just come
Speaker 3: with me to Afghanistan where he goes a lot. And
Speaker 3: of course I was very nervous, but I thought, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I feel like I really want to, and so I
Speaker 3: had no expectation. I just went with a notepad and
Speaker 3: I thought, well, all I'm going to do is just
Speaker 3: record what I see. That's all I'm going to do.
Speaker 3: And then it grew into going to cross Fow together,
Speaker 3: going to Washington, DC together, and I just carried on
Speaker 3: doing that same thing. I'm just going to write down
Speaker 3: what I see, that's all. I didn't know what it
Speaker 3: would become. But at the same time, like I said,
Speaker 3: I was growing an interest in poetry. So I ended
Speaker 3: up with having an enormous amount of words to play with.
Speaker 3: Then thought, okay, can I try and want some poems
Speaker 3: out of this? And a poetry book came out of it,
Speaker 3: and then an album came out of it, and then
Speaker 3: I sort of organically fell into this new way of
Speaker 3: sort of writing poems and writing songs, which sits with
Speaker 3: me very well at the moment and might not in
Speaker 3: ten years time, but right now it does. And I
Speaker 3: think that's what happens as an artist. You find different
Speaker 3: modes of working work well for you at that time
Speaker 3: in your life, and you adopt them, and then later
Speaker 3: on down the line, they don't, you do something else.
Speaker 3: And right now that's become quite a satisfying way for
Speaker 3: me of finding my way through words and music.
Speaker 1: It's really as a listener, I mean, I really have
Speaker 1: enjoyed these last few projects. I didn't one hundred percent
Speaker 1: know that you were in a different mode of working,
Speaker 1: but the resulting work is just so interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: the feel of these records are and I don't know
Speaker 1: if that comes from the writing necessarily. It could just
Speaker 1: be from you know, the groups of people you guys
Speaker 1: are playing with and all you're recording them, But it's
Speaker 1: just I really, really really love these projects. I feel
Speaker 1: special in an interesting way.
Speaker 3: I think it comes about because of all the ingredients.
Speaker 3: You know, it's because of the way they're written. But
Speaker 3: it's also a huge part of it is coming together
Speaker 3: with John and Flood. And I share with John and
Speaker 3: Flood all of my workings, all of my writings, all
Speaker 3: of the words, the demos, so they're a big part
Speaker 3: of the growing of the whole project right from its
Speaker 3: very beginning.
Speaker 1: And I imagine John, you knew about her trip to Afrigat,
Speaker 1: I mean that were you worried about that draft?
Speaker 2: Yes, I was, well, I was worried. I think it's
Speaker 2: incredibly brave to do it. It was obviously it was
Speaker 2: very incredibly valuable to the to the writing process, but
Speaker 2: it's not something that I personally would have risked. I
Speaker 2: think it was the risk, and she was very brave
Speaker 2: to do it. And yes, I was worried.
Speaker 1: Were you much of a traveler before, Polly, Ah?
Speaker 3: No, but I always wanted to be, and you know,
Speaker 3: I had a huge interest in Yeah, I just didn't
Speaker 3: wanting to see things firsthand and thought there's only one
Speaker 3: way to do that. You just got to go there.
Speaker 3: And I think that desire overrode any fear, because the
Speaker 3: desire to actually be there and see it was greater
Speaker 3: than the fears that I had.
Speaker 1: I mean, I imagine that you probably didn't even do
Speaker 1: much travel, I mean outside of touring.
Speaker 3: Right, No, not really no, I mean a.
Speaker 1: Lot of people end up kind of getting hooked to traveling.
Speaker 1: Do you did it change you in that sense? Do
Speaker 1: you feel like you want to go more places now?
Speaker 1: Or was that it was? Are you content having just
Speaker 1: gone on that trip?
Speaker 3: You know, I'm a I'm a maker, and the thing
Speaker 3: that I'm drawn towards making, I will serve in any
Speaker 3: way I have to, And so the next thing that
Speaker 3: I do will probably be to do with the project
Speaker 3: that I'm serving at the time. That's my drive, if
Speaker 3: that makes sense. So I don't know, you know, if
Speaker 3: the next project's going to mean I need to travel
Speaker 3: to source the material better than I will, or if
Speaker 3: I need to stay in one place, then I'll stay there.
Speaker 3: It really down to that. That is kind of what
Speaker 3: I do, and that is my driving force.
Speaker 1: You had mentioned before that like that was a very
Speaker 1: difficult record to write in hindsight. Does that still feel true?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it did feel difficult to write musically more than lyrically.
Speaker 3: The poems and the words that I gathered came together
Speaker 3: quite easily, but I found it difficult to create the
Speaker 3: music I wanted to hear, and it took me quite
Speaker 3: a while to get enough material together. I think I
Speaker 3: had to write fight a lot of things to really
Speaker 3: get to some good things.
Speaker 1: Did you hear that from the demos?
Speaker 2: John, Yes, there were definitely a lot more songs that
Speaker 2: we had to go through before we found a collection
Speaker 2: that we felt was a really strong body of work.
Speaker 2: So there was a you know, I don't remember there
Speaker 2: being very many demos from the Letting Wind Shake sessions
Speaker 2: that didn't make it either onto the album or onto
Speaker 2: a B side, whereas there were a lot I think. Yeah,
Speaker 2: as Polly said, she had to write a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff to come up with the ones that were strong
Speaker 2: enough to work on.
Speaker 1: How does having maybe weaker demos or demos that you're
Speaker 1: not quite sure how they're going to work? How does
Speaker 1: that change the recording approach?
Speaker 2: Well, I think that we wouldn't even go into the
Speaker 2: studio until we were comfortable that we had all the songs.
Speaker 2: So it was more it was more that it took
Speaker 2: a long time to get to that stage, but Polly's
Speaker 2: always you know that.
Speaker 1: For me, the.
Speaker 2: Absolute strongest thing about Polly's work is that it's every
Speaker 2: record has been different, and obviously the more records you make,
Speaker 2: the harder and harder that becomes. Of course, I know
Speaker 2: that she wanted them to be singable songs because they
Speaker 2: were again, they were dealing with difficult subjects and she
Speaker 2: didn't want to make it. It was a way of making
Speaker 2: it not a heavy, mirthless affair. So she wanted singable melodies.
Speaker 2: And again, so how do you come up with something
Speaker 2: like that that's not you know, something that's singable that
Speaker 2: you haven't done before, but it's not asinine as well.
Speaker 2: So there was a lot, asking a lot of yourself
Speaker 2: to come up with that, and it took a while
Speaker 2: to get to that stage.
Speaker 1: Is that a standard you feel you hold yourself to
Speaker 1: Polly like that? You want every record to have to
Speaker 1: feel different, to sound different, to be different in some way?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. I've just always been like that. Even
Speaker 3: when I was doing an art foundation course, everything I
Speaker 3: did I wanted it to be like nothing I'd ever
Speaker 3: done before. And I've been like that my whole life.
Speaker 3: I just I'm so interested in learning. I really like learning,
Speaker 3: and the only way you learn is to do things
Speaker 3: you don't know. It's just doing something you don't know,
Speaker 3: and that's so exciting, just always finding out something new,
Speaker 3: and that's what keeps me just looking under different songs
Speaker 3: the whole time.
Speaker 1: So you find that's true of your relationship to artists
Speaker 1: other artists you love. Do you find yourself disappointed when
Speaker 1: artists sort of repeat the same thing or return to
Speaker 1: a similar place and aren't evolving similarly.
Speaker 2: It depends some artists you like on some level when
Speaker 2: you don't expect them to be reinventing themselves every time.
Speaker 2: Some artists you have a different expectation. I have extremely
Speaker 2: high expectations of Polly, and so I feel that she's
Speaker 2: not coming out with something new, then it's going to
Speaker 2: be disappointing for me, because she's one of the very
Speaker 2: select group of artists that I regard as inspirational. And
Speaker 2: for those people, you want more than just another good record.
Speaker 2: You're looking for something that is going to inspire you.
Speaker 2: And that's tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Personally, I kind of put you parley like with
Speaker 1: Neil Young, where it's like, I mean, some people would
Speaker 1: say that Neil Young always sounds the same, but to me,
Speaker 1: I hear something different all the time. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like always changing, and I can hear his focus and
Speaker 1: determination and I don't know, it's creative process that I
Speaker 1: think comes out on the records, and I feel that
Speaker 1: same spirit or sense you know from your records.
Speaker 3: I have great admiration for Neil Young for the reason
Speaker 3: you're saying. He's always trying different things, radically different things,
Speaker 3: and that's so exciting. I'd much rather hear an artist
Speaker 3: doing that and not always hitting the mark, you know,
Speaker 3: but even and the fact that you've tried something radically
Speaker 3: different is a success in itself, I think in my
Speaker 3: book anyway.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm mark. I mean, you put out those
Speaker 1: four track demos early. That's why I was like listening
Speaker 1: to that collection of songs, and that's why ultimately, when
Speaker 1: I finally got around to listening to the new like
Speaker 1: the sort of spade of demos, really demo releases that
Speaker 1: you put out a couple of years ago, that was
Speaker 1: exciting too. I mean, it was so fun to hear
Speaker 1: something familiar but not quite there. It's like I can
Speaker 1: hear the reach you for what was ultimately what ultimately
Speaker 1: got made it to the record, you know, And it's
Speaker 1: just fun to hear the attempt.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it felt like the right time to show
Speaker 3: those I really love hearing those early stages of a song.
Speaker 3: You can hear, like you said, you can hear where
Speaker 3: it's trying to go. It hasn't quite yet. You can
Speaker 3: hear the idea of it, but the idea is not
Speaker 3: fully formed yet.
Speaker 1: And sometimes it's better, I mean, to be honest, Sometimes
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, I didn't you know, wouldn't have known.
Speaker 1: But I liked this demo version a lot.
Speaker 3: They can be enchanting in a different way because they're
Speaker 3: still so new. It's like the first time we've ever
Speaker 3: it's probably the first or second time I'd ever sung it,
Speaker 3: and there's something always going to be lovely about that,
Speaker 3: I think, John.
Speaker 1: I mean, having listened to the demos, speaking for myself,
Speaker 1: I would feel like I was going to fuck up
Speaker 1: some really good work. How do you feel when you're
Speaker 1: listening to Polly's demos? Do you always feel like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can make this better, or we can make this better,
Speaker 1: or is it like damn, this is maybe best as is.
Speaker 2: Once or twice maybe more, I have thought that we
Speaker 2: should do nothing to this. This is absolutely done as
Speaker 2: far as I'm concerned. But usually there's something there that
Speaker 2: you think, Okay, we can I think because we've been
Speaker 2: doing it for so long and working like this for
Speaker 2: so long, that we know we can always move things
Speaker 2: on from where they work. They already sounded great, but
Speaker 2: there's always somewhere better you can take it, and you
Speaker 2: always managed, with maybe one or two exceptions, we've always
Speaker 2: managed to do that. And you know it's not immediately
Speaker 2: apparent what it is that you're going to bring to it,
Speaker 2: But there has always been something that has moved those
Speaker 2: demos on, even though they were already in a good place.
Speaker 1: At the risk of going somewhere uncomfortable. Is there a
Speaker 1: record that either of you agree on that you guys
Speaker 1: moved it somewhere different, but maybe not to a place
Speaker 1: that was better or as good as the demo.
Speaker 2: There's a song, but a particular song that is a
Speaker 2: long time favorite of mine that Paulina, which is a
Speaker 2: song called the Garden from is this desire both me
Speaker 2: and Flood for when we heard the demo that is done?
Speaker 1: That is just brilliant.
Speaker 2: It didn't stay that way, and I've always been slightly
Speaker 2: not upset because then, of course it's come out as
Speaker 2: a demo and we've played the demo version. We're playing
Speaker 2: the demo version live on the current tour, and it
Speaker 2: is absolutely fantastic version. For me, that was really the
Speaker 2: only one where I was like, oh my god, that
Speaker 2: was the perfect recording already, why have you done it again?
Speaker 2: Otherwise I think everything, everything was valid, And we've also
Speaker 2: not been afraid to use bits from the demo, so
Speaker 2: it's not like the demo is one thing and the
Speaker 2: recording that on the records are totally differently. Often there
Speaker 2: are elements of the demo that are in the finished recording,
Speaker 2: so it's not that it's not either or yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Do you feel that way about the Guardian I
Speaker 1: do now.
Speaker 3: At the time on in total disagreement John, of course
Speaker 3: the road opinion said no, I'm doing this fabulous new
Speaker 3: recording of it, and now, of course I know he
Speaker 3: was right because he usually is. Well, I'm quite happy
Speaker 3: to now play the demo version of the Garden that
Speaker 3: we're playing live, and it's beautiful.
Speaker 1: Are you tempted to do any more of the demo
Speaker 1: versions live or is that the only one that you
Speaker 1: guys are really really considered.
Speaker 3: I guess you might. We were talking about bringing in
Speaker 3: some more songs for next year and some of those demo.
Speaker 2: Yeah we are are, actually there are. Yeah, there are
Speaker 2: one or two that were we were thinking about.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a brand new project, so maybe you
Speaker 1: don't know, but do you plan on releasing any of
Speaker 1: the demos from Eye Inside the Old You're Dying?
Speaker 3: Well, there were no demos really for Iye Inside the
Speaker 3: Old Dear Dying. And that was that this that was
Speaker 3: a new step again. I decided I did. I wasn't
Speaker 3: going to demo because I felt like it it would
Speaker 3: be better to just free fall into what the song
Speaker 3: was going to become. And so all I did was
Speaker 3: sung them into an iPhone. It would just be the
Speaker 3: voice and me on the piano or Meal the guitar,
Speaker 3: and I sang them into an iPhone and that was
Speaker 3: the demo. And I think I was trying not to
Speaker 3: get attached to demo recordings, which often happens with me.
Speaker 3: And also I felt more and more confident in what
Speaker 3: we can just create together. I mean, that's that confidence
Speaker 3: has grown. I know how John Flood and I work,
Speaker 3: and it's such an inspiring environment that I could take
Speaker 3: a scrap of a thing in. And actually I think
Speaker 3: it was more conducive because we only had a scrap
Speaker 3: of a song. We had the words, and we had
Speaker 3: roughly had the chords when but everything else was open
Speaker 3: and so all three of us could equally bring as
Speaker 3: much creativity to the song and our other player, Cecil
Speaker 3: Adam Bartlett, who was in the room with us, so
Speaker 3: we were all bringing our creativity along with Rob Crowan
Speaker 3: who was recording it. So it was a very collaborative
Speaker 3: creative space, and more so because the demos weren't really fixed.
Speaker 1: Well, look, thanks so much for doing this. It's really
Speaker 1: beautiful work you guys have done with this record for
Speaker 1: the last few records and really all of them, So
Speaker 1: thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Oh, thank you. Thanks a lot. Yeah, it's been lovely
Speaker 3: to talk to you. Hopefully you can come and see
Speaker 3: us play sometime next year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'd love to you. Are you guys coming to
Speaker 1: the US.
Speaker 3: Yes, yep, we are in September October time.
Speaker 1: Okay, great, yeah, yeah, I'll definitely come. Can't wait, right,
Speaker 1: Thanks to PJ Harvey and John Parrish for talking about
Speaker 1: their long standing creative partnership.
Speaker 2: You can hear.
Speaker 1: Pj's latest album, I Inside the Old You're Dying along
Speaker 1: with our favorite PJ Harvey songs on a playlist at
Speaker 1: broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Speaker 1: at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you
Speaker 1: can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
Speaker 1: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
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Speaker 1: any beats. I'm justin Richmond.