PJ Harvey & John Parish

00:00:15Speaker 1: Pushkin. Polly Jeene Harvey, better known as PJ Harvey, is without question one of my favorite songwriters of all time. Her debut album Dry came out in ninety three. It is what the La Times called a near instant classic. The same with her sophomore release, rid of Me, which became an inspiration for Navana's last album, in Utero. Ten albums later, and Polly continues to be not only a remarkable songwriter on her new album Eye inside the old You're Dying, but maybe more impressively, continues to find new musical territory and new voices to write from, keeping her songs and artistry as interesting as they were when she first put out music over thirty years ago. John Parrish, who's been a frequent collaborator of Polly since the eighties, produced the new album along with Flood, and joins me in conversation with Polly to discuss their process of working together, beauty of Polly's last few albums, and how they bonded a long time ago over Captain b Fire. This is broken record liner notes for the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's my conversation with PJ Harvey and John Parrish. I'm very excited to be able to talk to both of you. I don't always think about you guys in Unison, so it was fun to sort of think about how you guys worked together on these things. But you guys met in the eighties, which I didn't realize was the case. That's right.00:01:42Speaker 2: We met in the in nineteen eighty seven, I believe.00:01:47Speaker 1: And it was through your band, John.00:01:51Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, it was. It was the guitar player in my band, Jeremy Hogg, had met Polly at a party and she'd been singing some songs and he was really impressed with the only mentioned he mentioned her to May and then she came to a couple of gigs of the band and gave me some tapes songs she was. She was a teenager and her voice already sounded really great to me back at that time, so I asked if she wanted to join the band when she left school.00:02:21Speaker 3: I think you did it audition me, sort of sort of auditioned me first.00:02:26Speaker 2: It was it was a sham audition because you're definitely what.00:02:33Speaker 3: I came up to Bristol, didn't I. And we just we played through some of your band automatic the Meani's main riffs. I think you were just listening to see if I could play the riff with feel or not, because I wasn't a very adept guitar player at that point. I could play chords, but I wasn't very adept at anything else, and a lot of John's music was based more around melodies than chord structures. So I remember playing through some melodies on the guitar with you. John. I think you were just trying to see if I could play with feel or not. In fact, I often talked about feel, you know, just when I'm talking about music, because I think the feel that I play with is what I learned from John, because we often recognize how similar we'd play. If I've written a part on the guitar and I'm asking John to play it for live performance, he plays it just like me. But that's because I play like him, because he play finding a circle like that.00:03:34Speaker 1: So you don't think before that audition or that time you started playing with automatic meaning that you played, your playing was different before then you think, well, I.00:03:42Speaker 3: Was just I hadn't been playing guitar for very long, and so all I could play was chords on the guitar. I could play saxophone quite well, and I think I'd got to grade seven on saxophone, but I'd only just started playing the guitar, and all I knew was chords that I learned from songbook, and I didn't really pick out melodies. But then when I met John, I started learning about fingerpicking melodies, and then I practice with records at home a lot of those with things that John had introduced me to, like Captain Beefhart, things like that.00:04:18Speaker 1: Damn, wow, you were put Captain bee Far.00:04:22Speaker 4: It's a lot to ask of like a sixteen, seventeen, eighteen year old that I'm still trying to crack. Like I got seen as milk, I can get it as milk, and then it goes behind that and still breaks my brain.00:04:35Speaker 2: Yeah, I had had high expectations, which which she which she she always met, So it was.00:04:42Speaker 1: So that must have been the kind of stuff John that you were Really you're kind of like go to.00:04:46Speaker 2: I guess Captain beef stuff has been for years and years, you know, the years obviously an absolute one off in what he's done, and it's very difficult to get tired of listening to him because you're always finding something new. You know, I've been listening to those records for forty years and there's still ill still think, oh, I suddenly see how that works. Because a lot of it to me was just like a a weird puzzle. That was how I got interested in the first place, because I didn't understand it, and I thought I understood music. And when I first said kept in b fhar, I thought, I don't know what's going on here. I can't figure out who's saying, why they're doing it. Nothing made sense. But I was kind of interested enough to keep listening because I realized it had a physical effect on me, and I had a physical effect on other people that were listening to it as well.00:05:32Speaker 1: So it wasn't just that it was like bizarre that it was that you didn't understand it, but you could feel it still.00:05:37Speaker 2: I felt that there was something there. It was like hearing a foreign language and you're not not knowing what's going on, and then you listen to it enough times and gradually, like there's some words, you think, oh, I know what that word is, and you know you can put a couple of sentences together. And it was really like that. I gradually got to understand it in a way just by listening to it. And there are still things that I'm discovering now, So absolutely still go to May for sure.00:06:02Speaker 1: That's great. So before trout Mask Replica Parli, like, what was before that awakening? What was would have been the things that you were really loving to listen to at that time.00:06:15Speaker 3: Oh, I remember loving the Pogues at that time and the little band that I had, which was only a three tiny, three piece band. It was me on an acoustic guitar, a girl on a flute and a penny whistle friend of mine called Catherine, and this guy called Gus on the bass, and we used to do a lot of folk covers. I think when John came to see me, that's what I was doing in the local pub. But so I loved things like the Post because I could hear that it was folk music, which I loved, but it also had rebellion and spirit and punk. And then I fell in love with the Pixies as well, and they were a huge influence on me. I think John knew. I think you introduced me to Nick Cave in the Bad Seas because I remember you playing Cabin Fever. You know what you were just describing about chout Mass Replica. I remember listening to that going, I don't know what this is and it made me feel seasick. I just didn't know what I was listening too. And you played me from Her to Eternity as well, and then I really got into Nick Cave in the Bad Seats and Tom Waits. I don't think I knew weights, and then John introduced me to that and that was a massive influence on me. So I had this sort of mixture of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, the Pixies, Captain b Phart, and then my mum and dad's collection of records, which was brilliant, mostly Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. It's all sort of off sot with that.00:07:38Speaker 1: I love it. I can. I can hear that feel and you're playing that there's some stones in there, some stones in the Pies. You mentioned your sax plane when you're growing up playing sax in Endorset, like, is it a jazz ensemble or is it more as part of like a like a brass ensemble in the classical sense.00:07:57Speaker 3: Well, my mum and my dad were always very into music, so much so that they had a group of friends that were London based that started introducing them to rhythm and blues bands from London that my mom started then bringing those bands down to play in the local village tools in our village areas. So we'd end up with these rhythm and blues and boogie woogie bands staying with us nearly every weekend and some great players. And that's when I thought, oh, I really loved saxophone. And then they'd start giving me ad hoc lessons on the saxophone when they're staying and I started learning at school, so that's how that happened. And then I joined the local big band. So I was second tenor in a big band for quite a few years, which I love because you play all those big band standards Wow Wellington and you know, played some amazing songs and I learned a lot about structure and parts and being one of a whole from doing the big band work.00:09:00Speaker 1: Were you interested in big band music?00:09:03Speaker 3: Not really, No, I wasn't much more into track mass replica, but playing in a big band because I guess you know, in the way that I love playing in the current band we're in. You just learn about listening. You learn about listening to each other and you learn about playing off of the feel that you're all creating. Then that changes all the time. That's what makes it so exciting.00:09:29Speaker 1: I was listening to I think you're on it too, John, But you did a Ian Stewart tribute. You guys did a Lonely Avenue.00:09:36Speaker 3: John wasn't on. I was. I did that with my cousin.00:09:40Speaker 1: You and your cousin that John might have been on. You said, it's so natural doing that.00:09:45Speaker 3: So my mum's brother's son, my cousin Ben Waters, he's a boogie with pianist, and he became a boogie we be peers because he loved seeing Ian Stewart play.00:09:58Speaker 2: Now.00:09:58Speaker 3: Ian Stewart was often known as the fifth rolling Stone or sixth sixth rolling Stone, and well he was. He was always in the background. I mean, rumor has it that he wasn't in the Stones because he didn't look right right. But he was always with the Stones and he ended up being their road manager and he played on stage with them a lot. You'll often see him in the background now. He was a great friend of mom and dads. He influenced my cousin to want to play boogy boogy piano So now my cousin Ben Waters is a professional boogie boogie pianist and he put together this tribute to Ian Stewart and that's how that happened.00:10:37Speaker 1: So was Ian Stewart around then? Like was he one of the exactly?00:10:41Speaker 3: You know? I said, my mom and dad had a group of friends from London. I'll try and keep it simple, but so down here in Dorset where we live, it's a very very beautiful part of the countryside with rolling hills and an incredible coastline that's now become like a World Heritage site. It's called the Jurassic Coast. So people from London would just come here every weekend. One of them had a flat in this little cove and all of the people from London will come here just because it was so beautiful to escape London. And mom and dad, who lived down here already met those people. One of those people that used to come down every weekend was Ian Stewart. He was the one that introduced mum and dad to all of these bands from London that ended up coming down to play. And one of all bands was Ian's band, which was called Rocket eighty eight.00:11:34Speaker 1: Right right, which would I guess would have been based on that. I turned it song from way back when growing when you've seen him, did you know he's part of the Rolling Stone and maybe the founder of the Stones too.00:11:45Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah we did, and me and my brother and because Charlie Watts came down and Charlie played in Rocket eighty eight, you see, So Charlie Charlie ended up coming and staying in our house. And I remember my brother and I following him around because we knew that he was famous, so we just followed him around the house the entire time, followed Garden, followed him every where.00:12:09Speaker 1: Did you ever talk to him after following him?00:12:12Speaker 3: I h I think maybe a little bit. We were a bit shy because we were quite young. Then.00:12:17Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a crazy experience. I love Charlie Watts. I was trying to figure out. I feel like the last decade or so has been a really fruitful I seem to have read that it was a little difficult maybe, but a really fruitful run of records from like Let England Shake to Eye Inside the Old Year of Dying. I mean, just the three records that have come out in that time have just been really moving and interesting. But I was thinking about you guys' earliest work compared to this, and I mean, how does your guys' creative relationship work this well over time? I mean, it's just insane that you guys are sort of still seemingly, to the listener's point of view, like in lockstep creatively.00:13:02Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that that's quite rare to be a good creative relationship for that many years. I think we're both really appreciative of that. I mean, it's not something that you can make happen. It's either there or it's not. And I think that we've been lucky that we've, for whatever reason, creatively developed along similar lines or parallel lines for a long time. But we've always kind of understood what each other's doing, and we know each other's parameters really well. So it's very easy to judge things you know for each other and accept judgment from each other because we understand the parameters. We also trust each other implicitly, and that's again, it's not something that you can make happen. It's either there or it's not. And again, we're really appreciative that we have that because it just feels like when we're working together in the studio, and particularly when we're working with Flood as well. He's obviously been a part of all of those records. It feels like a very an incredibly strong creative unit. It creates a situation where people are not afraid to take chances and not afraid to take risks, and we know that there will always be somebody there to either support it or to say, actually that's not working, but maybe it's a route to something else. And it is afraid. You know, we're not worried about trying something and not working and then somebody thinking then they're not really very good. You know. We know that we have great respect for each other, the terrific trust, and that's been absolutely foundational to the work. I think, yeah, I.00:14:43Speaker 3: Mean I completely agree with John. I think it's having that level of trust because we've known each other for a long time and we've been through a lot together, myself, John arm Flood, and so then you can just be so open, you can be so risk taking and come up with crazy ideas and we'll have a go at them anyway, and then a lot of them fall down and theyre rubbish and we just laugh about it because and the other thing is We do laugh a lot. We have a similar sense of humors. We spend a lot of time laughing and that really helps. And we don't have egos in the sense of needing to hold on to some precious idea. We just let it go and we try something else. So it makes for a really wonderful inspirational collaboration. You're just constantly firing ideas off each other.00:15:31Speaker 1: After this break, we'll be back with more of our conversation with John Parrish and the One and Only PJ. Harvey. We're back with more from John Parrish and PJ. Harvey. Speaking of like being open to ideas, the demos to Let England Shape were really fascinating. There's a lot of you singing, not even singing, but you writing songs over samples of things. Yeah, which is a really wild idea. I've never heard demos that sound that way. How did you start demoing songs that way for that record?00:16:08Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the first time I'd done that. It was going back to feel. It was some pieces of music I loved the feel of, but also the words were absolutely right for the words and the lyrics I was creating, so I only used loops of things that resonated with the subject matter of the song, so that made for a really strong combination. And then some of those loops we did use in the eventual recording, and some of them we didn't, or some of them we just referenced, but we used parts of on So it was just a good launching pad for me as I was trying to find my way into what I was writing. And you can also hear on the demos I was mapping out vocal ideas as well, because I knew I wanted lots of additional singers. But it's very interesting to hear. How then those demos then moved into the final recordings and that changed quite a bit. John, I don't know if you want to say about I think our environment just being in each church had a big impact.00:17:10Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it did. It was a great session. The demos were really interesting. We didn't want to use like whole loops going through all the tracks, you know, and so we approach in different ways, either sometimes replaying some things, replaying little bits and pieces of them, or using sort of segments instead. But it was such a strong body of songs and lyrically, it was a big departure for Polly.00:17:38Speaker 1: Well, and how do you view that as someone who's worked alongside her for so long?00:17:42Speaker 2: You know, I have to say when Police first said that she was writing an album of songs loosely about war, I was a little bit nervous as to how she was going to pull that off, because I think that's act an incredibly difficult thing to do in an artistically successful way. As soon as I heard the first three or four demos, I was like, Okay, these are great. She's totally going to do it. And it tears a tremendously press his piece of writing. All the songs on that record. When we came to record them, it was the most open that Polly had been in a recording situation. And I don't know whether that was just the time of the development as an artist, the development of Polly's a human being, or the fact that the songs were very much the third person up until that time. You could say there was a degree. Well, certainly people would interpret most of the songs before that as being Polly writing the first person, even if they weren't, whereas this group of songs you do absolutely couldn't. I suppose you could try and glean some kind of idea what she might think about historical events or current events, and how she was timed the two together. But for whatever reason, in that session, Polly was incredibly open to the process. Maybe it was also to do with being very confident in the material. The songs came together very very quickly in a beautiful space. It was a big open space church where we could all play at the same time, and literally every day we would start a new song and we wouldn't really know how it was going to work out. We wouldn't even know who was going to play what instrument, you know, whether Mick would be playing drums or whether I would be playing drums, and then the other one of us would be playing either guitar or keepers or Poly might be playing guitar or auto harp. It was really, this is the song. It's a great song, let's see where we can take it. And by the end of each day pretty much the song had really found its own direction. It was a really tremendous session.00:19:45Speaker 1: Does that feel true to you probably in terms of this feeling like this writing being a little bit different than your other writing before it.00:19:52Speaker 3: Yeah, definitely. I remember after White Chalk I just knew I needed to find a completely vibrant and exciting new path for myself, and I didn't know what that was, and it took quite a lot time to find it. And anything I write about, I've got to feel very deeply emotionally connected to it or very moved by it. And I can remember at that time that England was involved in the Afghan War and the Iraq War, and I think I was just watching a program, a documentary about one soldier who'd been wounded in the war in Afghanistan, and I just found it so incredibly upsetting. I just remember this whole night feeling so upset, and I thought, you should write about that if you're feeling this upset. I think I was crying, you know, right like that, right about that, And that's how I thought, how can I write about that? And that's how it began. How how do you do that? So that was the starting point, and I think I learned a lot from that moment, because I think every album I've done since then, I have really thought the area that I'm trying to explore has to have a lot of meaning for me and has to really move me in order to really write good work.00:21:14Speaker 1: That moving from this is what I should write about? To how do I write about it? To actually then having written about it before you got anything you felt was good? Were there are like a lot of failed attempts to write well.00:21:30Speaker 3: LANGL and Shake Again was the first time that I wrote words firstly alone on a page with no music. Prior to that, I'd always created songs in tandem, music and lyrics together. They'd grow with each other, and sometimes words would grow out of just chanting rhythmically on top of a riff that I had on the piano or guitar. But this time, because of what John said, like how you know it's such a difficult subject, how on earth you're going to approach that, I knew I had to get the words right, at least a semblance of them being right. First is that I couldn't just improvise words on top of music.00:22:10Speaker 1: Here.00:22:10Speaker 3: I had to think really carefully about what I was saying. It was a very fine line to tread. And there were a lot of words written. I lot it for, you know, the songs that made it on the album, and a lot of them never came to anything. And that's the other thing that was the first time I started moving into poetry, and I started taking poetry lessons that I wouldn't call letting is not poetry their songs. But it was where my interest in wanting to learn the craft of poetry began because as a starting point, I went and read all the First World War poets and I could see this magical craft that they had, and I wanted to learn how do you do that? So that was the first time I really thought, oh, I can't want to go into this, and then I moved into it deeper with Hope six and then with Iro Inside the Old Year.00:23:01Speaker 1: Were you reading a lot of World War One histories as well?00:23:05Speaker 3: Yes, yes, and contemporary war the time, like Afghan Iraqi war.00:23:12Speaker 1: And before this documentary, there was no interest in war, no personal interest in war.00:23:18Speaker 2: No.00:23:18Speaker 3: No, No, always in you know, very engaged with what was happening in the world, very upset by current conflicts. Always fascinated too by the history of Afghanistan, and I always felt drawn to that and Britain's involvement in both world wars. So no, I was very interested. It just never occurred to me that I could possibly write about it. I just didn't be qualified, you know. But you have to. I think there's a way in that you don't have to be qualified, but you can still walk the right line of speaking in a very naive way. I mean often think of William Blake's Songs of Innocence Experience, because that tiny little book is basically how to live, you know, but it's written like children's nursery rhymes. So I think you can write in a really naive way but still say an awful lot.00:24:17Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, even just you know, it's funny. The sample on the demo of let England Shape is stambul not Constantinople, which was like a kind of a goof of a song in a way. But even that song is kind of seen a lot in it's a weird way, you know, like these histories of countries conquering one another in name changes and what's in a name and what they mean. It's I don't know, that's interesting.00:24:39Speaker 3: Yeah, And that's what I love doing, playing off what the original loop was doing and then laying my words on top of it, sometimes joining in with those words, sometimes not. I think it also added a certain level of humor where it's not too self important. It's got a lightness to it. Which in having that lightness, it actually makes it heavier. It makes it mean more and affect more.00:25:04Speaker 1: Tell me about that. You guys recorded in a church and in Dorset. It was at the first time you got I said, recorded there. How did you guys settle on that place as a makesift studio.00:25:12Speaker 2: I think it was Polly didn't want to record in a studio in a traditional studio setting, and I guess it made sense to her because it was close to where she was living at the time, and it was kind of that simple in a way, like looking for a space that was close to where Polly lived, this was available. I think we had some concerns as to how it would be acoustically, but you know what, we moved a studio set up in there and it sounded great. It was a really just really cool space.00:25:47Speaker 3: It was quite quite magical as well, I felt, and I think we all felt that because it's on the top of the hill that overlooks the sea, and there's not really any any other buildings around it, and it's often very windy, so the trees were all bent by the wind, and the gravestones are still there. So we were singing these songs about death and war, and it felt like the wind was kind of blowing the voices in from the sea and the graves all over us. I do feel like there was something quite magical happening in that building, in that that Let England Shake session recording was one of the most special times of my life for that reason. It was just absolutely magical and so inspired and so exciting.00:26:37Speaker 1: Do either of you feel particularly religious or spiritual or have any affinity for a connection to at a personal level churches or a church?00:26:46Speaker 2: And I'm not religious, but I grew up going to church as a kid, And you know, obviously there's the fact that those buildings mean a lot to so many people. You know, you can't help but notice that and be infected by it. Yeah, So I have respect for it without without having faced myself.00:27:07Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm so interested in what different people are drawn to. I feel the beauty of those beautiful buildings, but also beauty in the fact that people want to come together to try and find meaning and try and share and to give and receive love and places where beautiful music is created and shared. So I'd keep an open mind, you know. And I often feel removed when I'm at places of worship. As I was in Eap Church when we were making Let England Shake. I did feel that the beauty of the building and its position helped us channel a perfect energy for that record.00:27:53Speaker 1: Yeah. Quite poor. I mean, you know, I just think about myself. There's a church right down the street from where I live, assignment particularly beautiful church, but enough that when I passed it, it makes me feel I'm, like, you know, feel on some level drawn to it. But at the same time I can't help but think about you know, it's the pain that sometimes that's the same beliefs bring to people, et cetera. And so there's kind of I don't know, it's just like a lot of there's a for me, a very contradictory feeling about churches, like a deep reverence and it's an't their aunt'spiring in a lot of ways, And I'm very much jealous of these people. Do, like you say, come together to find some level of meaning in life.00:28:29Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I said, I the power of people wanting to come together to try and find meaning. Why this In Afghanistan, I went to a Sufi It wasn't even a church, it was just a room, but it was their Sufi Sunday morning practice together where they'd sit for four hours chanting together, kneeling down and chanting till they were rocking back this and fores. It was incredibly moving in a different way. But again it's just the power of people coming together. I think to look for something to share, something to find the power together.00:29:08Speaker 1: After this last break, we'll be back with more from John Parrish and PJ. Harvey. We're back with the rest of my conversation with John Parrish and PJ. Harvey. You referenced a trip to Afghanistan. You know, the whole sixth Demolition project was the record after Let England Shake and before your Guys's newest one inside the Old Year Dying. You traveled around with Seamus Murphy, a great photographer, want to Afghanistan, coast of Ops DC. Were you intending to make a record based on those travels or was the travel something completely separate.00:29:47Speaker 3: I didn't know what it would become. I started working with Seamus on letting in shiks. He made the beautiful films that accompanied each song, and he took photographs and I grew a friendship with Seamus. And you know, Seamus has spent his whole life as a voter journalist, traveling all over the world and sometimes into very dangerous war torn areas, and from the interest I'd added from writing letting in shake, I still didn't feel close enough, and I thought, gosh, what if I could actually in instead of garnering information secondhand or from other people's writings, Well, if I could actually go somewhere myself. And James and I talked about that and he did say, well, look, why don't as a start, why don't you just come with me to Afghanistan where he goes a lot. And of course I was very nervous, but I thought, well, yeah, I feel like I really want to, and so I had no expectation. I just went with a notepad and I thought, well, all I'm going to do is just record what I see. That's all I'm going to do. And then it grew into going to cross Fow together, going to Washington, DC together, and I just carried on doing that same thing. I'm just going to write down what I see, that's all. I didn't know what it would become. But at the same time, like I said, I was growing an interest in poetry. So I ended up with having an enormous amount of words to play with. Then thought, okay, can I try and want some poems out of this? And a poetry book came out of it, and then an album came out of it, and then I sort of organically fell into this new way of sort of writing poems and writing songs, which sits with me very well at the moment and might not in ten years time, but right now it does. And I think that's what happens as an artist. You find different modes of working work well for you at that time in your life, and you adopt them, and then later on down the line, they don't, you do something else. And right now that's become quite a satisfying way for me of finding my way through words and music.00:31:58Speaker 1: It's really as a listener, I mean, I really have enjoyed these last few projects. I didn't one hundred percent know that you were in a different mode of working, but the resulting work is just so interesting. You know, the feel of these records are and I don't know if that comes from the writing necessarily. It could just be from you know, the groups of people you guys are playing with and all you're recording them, But it's just I really, really really love these projects. I feel special in an interesting way.00:32:23Speaker 3: I think it comes about because of all the ingredients. You know, it's because of the way they're written. But it's also a huge part of it is coming together with John and Flood. And I share with John and Flood all of my workings, all of my writings, all of the words, the demos, so they're a big part of the growing of the whole project right from its very beginning.00:32:45Speaker 1: And I imagine John, you knew about her trip to Afrigat, I mean that were you worried about that draft?00:32:52Speaker 2: Yes, I was, well, I was worried. I think it's incredibly brave to do it. It was obviously it was very incredibly valuable to the to the writing process, but it's not something that I personally would have risked. I think it was the risk, and she was very brave to do it. And yes, I was worried.00:33:15Speaker 1: Were you much of a traveler before, Polly, Ah?00:33:19Speaker 3: No, but I always wanted to be, and you know, I had a huge interest in Yeah, I just didn't wanting to see things firsthand and thought there's only one way to do that. You just got to go there. And I think that desire overrode any fear, because the desire to actually be there and see it was greater than the fears that I had.00:33:41Speaker 1: I mean, I imagine that you probably didn't even do much travel, I mean outside of touring.00:33:45Speaker 3: Right, No, not really no, I mean a.00:33:48Speaker 1: Lot of people end up kind of getting hooked to traveling. Do you did it change you in that sense? Do you feel like you want to go more places now? Or was that it was? Are you content having just gone on that trip?00:34:02Speaker 3: You know, I'm a I'm a maker, and the thing that I'm drawn towards making, I will serve in any way I have to, And so the next thing that I do will probably be to do with the project that I'm serving at the time. That's my drive, if that makes sense. So I don't know, you know, if the next project's going to mean I need to travel to source the material better than I will, or if I need to stay in one place, then I'll stay there. It really down to that. That is kind of what I do, and that is my driving force.00:34:39Speaker 1: You had mentioned before that like that was a very difficult record to write in hindsight. Does that still feel true?00:34:46Speaker 3: Yeah, it did feel difficult to write musically more than lyrically. The poems and the words that I gathered came together quite easily, but I found it difficult to create the music I wanted to hear, and it took me quite a while to get enough material together. I think I had to write fight a lot of things to really get to some good things.00:35:13Speaker 1: Did you hear that from the demos?00:35:15Speaker 2: John, Yes, there were definitely a lot more songs that we had to go through before we found a collection that we felt was a really strong body of work. So there was a you know, I don't remember there being very many demos from the Letting Wind Shake sessions that didn't make it either onto the album or onto a B side, whereas there were a lot I think. Yeah, as Polly said, she had to write a lot of stuff to come up with the ones that were strong enough to work on.00:35:44Speaker 1: How does having maybe weaker demos or demos that you're not quite sure how they're going to work? How does that change the recording approach?00:35:54Speaker 2: Well, I think that we wouldn't even go into the studio until we were comfortable that we had all the songs. So it was more it was more that it took a long time to get to that stage, but Polly's always you know that.00:36:07Speaker 1: For me, the.00:36:08Speaker 2: Absolute strongest thing about Polly's work is that it's every record has been different, and obviously the more records you make, the harder and harder that becomes. Of course, I know that she wanted them to be singable songs because they were again, they were dealing with difficult subjects and she didn't want to make it. It was a way of making it not a heavy, mirthless affair. So she wanted singable melodies. And again, so how do you come up with something like that that's not you know, something that's singable that you haven't done before, but it's not asinine as well. So there was a lot, asking a lot of yourself to come up with that, and it took a while to get to that stage.00:36:49Speaker 1: Is that a standard you feel you hold yourself to Polly like that? You want every record to have to feel different, to sound different, to be different in some way?00:36:58Speaker 3: Yeah, it is. I've just always been like that. Even when I was doing an art foundation course, everything I did I wanted it to be like nothing I'd ever done before. And I've been like that my whole life. I just I'm so interested in learning. I really like learning, and the only way you learn is to do things you don't know. It's just doing something you don't know, and that's so exciting, just always finding out something new, and that's what keeps me just looking under different songs the whole time.00:37:32Speaker 1: So you find that's true of your relationship to artists other artists you love. Do you find yourself disappointed when artists sort of repeat the same thing or return to a similar place and aren't evolving similarly.00:37:43Speaker 2: It depends some artists you like on some level when you don't expect them to be reinventing themselves every time. Some artists you have a different expectation. I have extremely high expectations of Polly, and so I feel that she's not coming out with something new, then it's going to be disappointing for me, because she's one of the very select group of artists that I regard as inspirational. And for those people, you want more than just another good record. You're looking for something that is going to inspire you. And that's tough.00:38:18Speaker 1: Yeah. Personally, I kind of put you parley like with Neil Young, where it's like, I mean, some people would say that Neil Young always sounds the same, but to me, I hear something different all the time. You know, it's like always changing, and I can hear his focus and determination and I don't know, it's creative process that I think comes out on the records, and I feel that same spirit or sense you know from your records.00:38:43Speaker 3: I have great admiration for Neil Young for the reason you're saying. He's always trying different things, radically different things, and that's so exciting. I'd much rather hear an artist doing that and not always hitting the mark, you know, but even and the fact that you've tried something radically different is a success in itself, I think in my book anyway.00:39:06Speaker 1: That's why I'm mark. I mean, you put out those four track demos early. That's why I was like listening to that collection of songs, and that's why ultimately, when I finally got around to listening to the new like the sort of spade of demos, really demo releases that you put out a couple of years ago, that was exciting too. I mean, it was so fun to hear something familiar but not quite there. It's like I can hear the reach you for what was ultimately what ultimately got made it to the record, you know, And it's just fun to hear the attempt.00:39:36Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it felt like the right time to show those I really love hearing those early stages of a song. You can hear, like you said, you can hear where it's trying to go. It hasn't quite yet. You can hear the idea of it, but the idea is not fully formed yet.00:39:52Speaker 1: And sometimes it's better, I mean, to be honest, Sometimes I'm like, oh, I didn't you know, wouldn't have known. But I liked this demo version a lot.00:39:59Speaker 3: They can be enchanting in a different way because they're still so new. It's like the first time we've ever it's probably the first or second time I'd ever sung it, and there's something always going to be lovely about that, I think, John.00:40:14Speaker 1: I mean, having listened to the demos, speaking for myself, I would feel like I was going to fuck up some really good work. How do you feel when you're listening to Polly's demos? Do you always feel like, oh, I can make this better, or we can make this better, or is it like damn, this is maybe best as is.00:40:33Speaker 2: Once or twice maybe more, I have thought that we should do nothing to this. This is absolutely done as far as I'm concerned. But usually there's something there that you think, Okay, we can I think because we've been doing it for so long and working like this for so long, that we know we can always move things on from where they work. They already sounded great, but there's always somewhere better you can take it, and you always managed, with maybe one or two exceptions, we've always managed to do that. And you know it's not immediately apparent what it is that you're going to bring to it, But there has always been something that has moved those demos on, even though they were already in a good place.00:41:13Speaker 1: At the risk of going somewhere uncomfortable. Is there a record that either of you agree on that you guys moved it somewhere different, but maybe not to a place that was better or as good as the demo.00:41:25Speaker 2: There's a song, but a particular song that is a long time favorite of mine that Paulina, which is a song called the Garden from is this desire both me and Flood for when we heard the demo that is done?00:41:45Speaker 1: That is just brilliant.00:41:47Speaker 2: It didn't stay that way, and I've always been slightly not upset because then, of course it's come out as a demo and we've played the demo version. We're playing the demo version live on the current tour, and it is absolutely fantastic version. For me, that was really the only one where I was like, oh my god, that was the perfect recording already, why have you done it again? Otherwise I think everything, everything was valid, And we've also not been afraid to use bits from the demo, so it's not like the demo is one thing and the recording that on the records are totally differently. Often there are elements of the demo that are in the finished recording, so it's not that it's not either or yeah.00:42:30Speaker 1: Yeah, Do you feel that way about the Guardian I do now.00:42:35Speaker 3: At the time on in total disagreement John, of course the road opinion said no, I'm doing this fabulous new recording of it, and now, of course I know he was right because he usually is. Well, I'm quite happy to now play the demo version of the Garden that we're playing live, and it's beautiful.00:42:54Speaker 1: Are you tempted to do any more of the demo versions live or is that the only one that you guys are really really considered.00:43:03Speaker 3: I guess you might. We were talking about bringing in some more songs for next year and some of those demo.00:43:09Speaker 2: Yeah we are are, actually there are. Yeah, there are one or two that were we were thinking about.00:43:14Speaker 1: I mean, it's a brand new project, so maybe you don't know, but do you plan on releasing any of the demos from Eye Inside the Old You're Dying?00:43:21Speaker 3: Well, there were no demos really for Iye Inside the Old Dear Dying. And that was that this that was a new step again. I decided I did. I wasn't going to demo because I felt like it it would be better to just free fall into what the song was going to become. And so all I did was sung them into an iPhone. It would just be the voice and me on the piano or Meal the guitar, and I sang them into an iPhone and that was the demo. And I think I was trying not to get attached to demo recordings, which often happens with me. And also I felt more and more confident in what we can just create together. I mean, that's that confidence has grown. I know how John Flood and I work, and it's such an inspiring environment that I could take a scrap of a thing in. And actually I think it was more conducive because we only had a scrap of a song. We had the words, and we had roughly had the chords when but everything else was open and so all three of us could equally bring as much creativity to the song and our other player, Cecil Adam Bartlett, who was in the room with us, so we were all bringing our creativity along with Rob Crowan who was recording it. So it was a very collaborative creative space, and more so because the demos weren't really fixed.00:44:50Speaker 1: Well, look, thanks so much for doing this. It's really beautiful work you guys have done with this record for the last few records and really all of them, So thank you so much.00:45:00Speaker 3: Oh, thank you. Thanks a lot. Yeah, it's been lovely to talk to you. Hopefully you can come and see us play sometime next year.00:45:07Speaker 1: Yeah, we'd love to you. Are you guys coming to the US.00:45:09Speaker 3: Yes, yep, we are in September October time.00:45:13Speaker 1: Okay, great, yeah, yeah, I'll definitely come. Can't wait, right, Thanks to PJ Harvey and John Parrish for talking about their long standing creative partnership.00:45:24Speaker 2: You can hear.00:45:24Speaker 1: Pj's latest album, I Inside the Old You're Dying along with our favorite PJ Harvey songs on a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolliday. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad free listening for four ninety nine a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcasts scriptions, and if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme Music's back any beats. I'm justin Richmond.