PJ Harvey
Seamus Murphy
I can’t wait to hear the whole of PJ Harvey‘s new album Let England Shake tecorded in a 19th Century church near her home in Dorset. I now also want to see all the 12 videos that accompany the tracks shot by Seamus Murphy.
The first two of these for The Last Living Rose and The Words That Maketh Murder are now up on her website and you can also see them here to save you an extra mouse click.
Photographer, Seamus Murphy is a new name to me. A trawl of the net reveals that he was born in England but raised in Ireland. He spent many years in Afganistan and his black and white photos from there were collected in a book “A Darkness Visible,” (Saqi Books, 2008). For more information about him, check out the excellent article in the Digital Photographer in the links below.
His videos for PJ feature still and moving images he shot during a 5,000-mile road trip around England and these brilliant shots accompany the amazing tracks. They say a picture tells a thousand stories and the shot of the old lady (see left) is proof .
PJ Harvey is one of those uncompromising artists who follows her own heart and if the rest of the album is half as good as these this is an early contender for album of the year. It would be great if it was released as a DVD/CD pack but there is no indication that this will happen. It is due out on Valentine’s Day.
Related links:
- PJ Harvey – The Words That Maketh Murder/The Last Living Rose (guardian.co.uk)
- PJ Harvey Talks New Album, Let England Shake (pitchfork.com)
- Seeing America: From Kennedy to Obama in the Global Post
- Article on Seamus Murphy by Beverly Spicer – The Digital Journalist
- Carry on up the Gulag – Radio interview about photos in Russia with Seamus Murphy.
In an interview for the Guardian today (22nd January 2011) Patti Smith says that she had been “listening to Polly Harvey’s new song – she has this new song, The Words That Maketh Murder – what a great song. It just makes me happy to exist. Whenever anyone does something of worth, including myself, it just makes me happy to be alive. So I listened to that song all morning, totally happy.”
Higher praise than that is hard to find!