PJ Harvey: Is This Desire?

"A woman lives in a garden surrounded by high rock walls. Moss and lichen grow like the hair and skin of something ancient over the cobblestone. Everything in the garden is old, and even new things are aged by the air inside of it. No one can come in, nor can she get out. She sees a figure passing outside between the cracks in the wall and wonders who they are,"

"They're loops, cycles without end: If they dried up and died in the winter, they might blossom again in the spring, their longings renewed in the thaw. They progress from chorus to verse as if they were taking meaningless daily walks, always in the same direction, always accompanied by the same obsessive sequence of thoughts. The only change is in intensity, a desperation to remain or even just briefly appear"

A woman confined in an ancient garden behind high rock walls embodies the album's central image of longing and isolation. She observes a passing figure through wall cracks and mistakes wind for a voice, creating imagined relationships that are reflections of herself. Each song functions as a narrative loop of cyclical desire and obsessive thought, moving subtly through verses and choruses like repetitive daily walks. Longing recurs seasonally, capable of dying and reblooming, with intensity as the only variable. The record channels austere beauty and Southern-gothic atmosphere into bracing rock arrangements that explore frustrated yearning and blurred identity.

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