At long last PJ Harvey has announced the Spring release of her next album, The Hope Six Demolition Project.   The new album is her first release since the tremulous Let England Shake, which was our No. 7 Best Album of 2011 (amidst very tough competition that year). The Hope Six Demolition Project will be released on April 15th and was apparently inspired by Harvey and Murphy’s visits to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington D.C.

Harvey has now released the first video from the album for the song The Wheel.  Harvey again has partnered on the video with Seamus Murphy (a photographer and videographer who made the impressive 12 Short Films for Let England Shake who has covered turmoil in Afghanistan and Kosovo).

About The Wheel and the video, Murphy says: “The song ‘The Wheel’ has the journey to Kosovo at its center [Harvey and Murphy traveled there together in 2011].  Who is to say what else has influenced and informed its creation? The sight of a revolving fairground wheel in Fushe Kosove/Kosovo Polje near the capital Pristina is the concrete reference point for the title.  It was a passing observation of a commonplace image, one of many that day. … Was that sight alone the inspiration for the song? Without being told the stories of people who had suffered during the war, without visiting villages abandoned through ethnic cleansing and cycles of vengeance, without experiencing the different perceptions of people with shared histories, could the song have been written?  The idea of cycles, wheels and repetition once again being all too apparent and necessary to make.”

The affecting video combines scenes from Harvey’s/Murphy’s trip in 2011, Harvey’s album preparation in London and another trip to Kosovo in 2015, when the refugee crisis was making headlines.  As usual with Harvey, we love everything about the new song, which bodes incredibly well for The Hope Six Demolition Project.