The last time the world of music heard from Polly Harvey was more than seven years ago, in the spring of 2016. Brexit had yet to happen, Barack Obama was still president, and the 53-year-old was on a world tour, albeit the kind of tour the late PJ O’Rourke conducted to research his 1988 opus Holidays in Hell, rather than the kind that involves roadies, riders and soundchecks. The Hope Six Demolition Project, Harvey’s ninth studio album, offered a travelogue of ravaged locations around the globe – Afghanistan, Kosovo, the roughest neighbourhoods of Washington DC – that Harvey had visited in the company of photographer and film-maker Seamus Murphy. It was clearly a process that she ultimately found exhausting: by the end of the accompanying run of live shows, she was apparently considering retiring from music entirely.
