PJ Harvey – I Inside the Old I Dying
2023 · Directed by Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña
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Best comments
1.“Music to either sadly look back upon life... or conjure up an ethereal forest creature.”
More comments
- 2.“I want my life to be directed by David Lynch and soundtracked by PJ Harvey.”
- 3.“Watched this with my 5-year-old daughter. She asked why the fire didn't protect the man from dying. She also thought the dog peeing on the bones was hilarious.”
The story
PJ Harvey went home for this one. The song comes off I Inside the Old Year Dying, her first album in seven years, which grew out of her book-length poem Orlam, and it's partly written in the dialect of Dorset, the corner of England where she was born. Harvey said it slipped away from the band for five weeks and only came together on the very last day in the studio, when a guitar figure from John Parish finally unlocked it and Flood recorded her vocal while she was still figuring out how to sing over it. She describes it as longing for a savior who's supposed to come back, tangled up with the crossings from child to adult and from life to death.
For the video she went to Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña, the Chilean duo behind the animated feature The Wolf House (they also did an animated sequence for Ari Aster's Beau Is Afraid). They built it in their workshop in Santiago, life size and in black and white, out of cardboard, white latex, soil, parquet flooring and debris. Instead of nudging figures frame by frame, they swapped in pre-made poses – about eight for the walking figure, about eight for the dog (credited simply as Klaus). They read Dorset folk tales, adapted one, and came out with an androgynous wanderer and a three-minute fairy tale about love, death and resurrection. No dialogue.
It plays like a ritual somebody filmed by accident. The directors said they wanted every object on screen to work like a talisman in a ceremony, not a prop. Mission accomplished. The album went on to a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Album.
