Pitchfork

PJ Harvey is presently at work on her follow-up to 2000's Mercury Music Prize-winning Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea on Island, including songs co-written by Gap spokesgranny Marianne Faithfull. No release date or title for the new album is yet available, but Harvey recently described it to New Musical Express like this: "It's a much more simple, rough, raw sounding record. It's brutally honest, there's not a lot of beautifying of anything. On the last record I was very in to creating layers of beauty and melodic intensity and soft beautiful sounds, and all of that's gone out the window now. I tend to be someone that reacts against [their] last piece of work, so I've gone for quite ugly sounds and quite disturbing, raw, angry, upsetting sort of material." Oh, hot!

In related news, Madam Harvey plans to lay down tracks with Queens of the Stone Age vocalist and guitarist Josh Homme as part of his ninth Desert Session later this year. Homme has been recording music at his Rancho de la Luna Studios in Joshua Tree, California with a revolving cast of Sabbath revivalists since 1996 and issuing installments in his Desert Sessions series since 1998, with the objective of reaching twelve volumes of narcotic riff bliss within five years.

Past contributors to the series include fellow Queen Nick Oliveri, various members of Homme's former band Kyuss, and members of Soundgarden, Masters of Reality, Monster Magnet, Wool, and Fatso Jetson. The last Desert Session was one of several collaborations between Homme and former Screaming Trees vocalist Mark Lanegan, who has appeared on QOTSA's last two albums, and with the band on their current tour. PJ Harvey will also contribute vocals to Lanegan's next album for Sub Pop, which he is currently at work on.

PJ Harvey also just completed a stint with the Big Day Out tour in Australia and New Zealand, and is scheduled to perform at the V2003, Glastonbury, Reading, and Leeds festivals in England this summer.