PJ Harvey made up for lost time last night (Sept. 22) at her first show in nearly six years. Harvey and her band performed all 12 songs from the recently-released album I Inside the Old Year Dying and dusted off a wealth of other rarely played numbers. Prior to the concert at Dublin’s 3Olympia Theatre, the long-running U.K. group had not been on stage since Nov. 18, 2017, in Mexico City.
Harvey and company played I Inside the Old Year Dying in sequence to begin the show and followed it with a second set featuring rare performances of “Man-Size” and “The Garden” (first time since 2008), “Send His Love to Me” (first time since 2009), and “Angelene” (first time since 2012). Oddly, not a single song was performed from the beloved 2000 album Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, which was a hit on both sides of the Atlantic.
Since releasing The Hope Six Demolition Project in 2016, Harvey has devoted recent years to creative pursuits such as the full-length narrative poem Oriam in 2021. She has continued to make music, including a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Who by Fire” for the Apple TV+ series Bad Sisters. Her influential back catalog was also reissued for the digital age, including a 59-track collection titled B-Sides, Demos, and Rarities.
PJ Harvey’s European tour continues through an Oct. 30-31 run in Oslo. No dates have yet been announced for the U.S., which the group has also not visited since the summer of 2017.
