PJ Harvey says she's "very happy" with new album due out in summer 2023

Following the release of PJ Harvey's narrative poem Orlam in April, she revealed to Rolling Stone that between working on poetry, she's been recording a new album.

While she has shared reissues of her albums with previously unreleased demos over the past couple of years, PJ Harvey hasn't released a new album since 2016's The Hope Six Demolition Project.

PJ Harvey said of her forthcoming album, which is expected to be released in summer 2023, "I’m very pleased with it. It took a long time to write to get right, but at last I feel very happy with it."

When asked what's been inspiring her lately, PJ Harvey responded, "I’ve become more and more drawn to soundtrack work. I think because of my love of film and television, I so often become completely under the spell of a soundtrack. Some of the greatest soundtrack writers would be Jonny Greenwood, Mica Levi, Hildur Guðnadóttir, her Chernobyl soundtrack for example, Ryuichi Sakamoto."

She added, "So I very often am listening to instrumental music from films, but otherwise I think sort of contemporary music I’ve really loved Thom Yorke’s solo projects, but also his work with the Smile. Mica Levi’s bands, her work with Tirzah, her work with Micachu and the Shapes, Good Sad Happy Bad. Gosh, and I recently came across Anna von Hausswolff’s All Thoughts Fly, which knocked me sideways. I thought that was amazing. Bob Dylan, I mean "Murder Most Foul" was absolutely astonishing. And I find no greater pleasure than when I see an artist who I’ve admired all my life, doing their best work as their most recent work. I think, “Oh, wow.” That just fills me with such pleasure. And I felt that with Bob Dylan’s entire Rough and Rowdy Ways album."

Harvey also said of her recent reissues and demos, "I think because a lot of time had passed since making those demos and now, it felt like a nice thing to do. To let people in, to see a little more of the process, how the songs first start. Also, I was very attached to the demos because they’re always the first incarnation of the songs. There’s something about the spirit of the song being caught in a way that it’s never quite captured again on the album."