“Orlam” tells the fantastical story of a year in the life of Ira-Abel, a nine-year-old girl who seeks solace in flora, fauna, and otherworldly spirits as she struggles to discover who she is and what her life is for. Both the poems and the album lyrics require some footnotes for a lay reader to untangle, but Harvey’s sense of rhythm and scene are so exquisite that it hardly feels like work at all. It’s based loosely on “ Orlam,” Harvey’s second book of poetry, which was published in 2022 and written in the heavy, captivating vernacular of Dorset, the coastal county in southwest England where Harvey was brought up. Earlier this month, Harvey released “I Inside the Old Year Dying,” her tenth album, and her first since 2016. For me, her work has always conjured images of the natural world, a certain rawness and danger: a prehistoric volcano rupturing, or a big cat darting elegantly across a plain. Since 1992, when she released “Dry,” her début album, PJ Harvey has made complex music that channels a primal, earthly energy.
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