Guitarist, drummer, songwriter, ex-Bad Seed Mick Harvey is releasing a new solo album Sketches From The Book Of The Dead on April 29 via Mute/EMI.
Harvey recently posted about the new album and his work on PJ Harvey’s latest Let England Shake…
Having dragged myself away from the North Illawarra beaches and the Melbourne summer, I am in the Europe once more to begin presenting the show we prepared back in December with PJ Harvey. The dates are selling out and, with the album’s imminent release on February 14th., it’s all systems go. Myself, John Parish, Jean–Marc Butty and Polly have a great camaraderie and have really enjoyed working up the live versions of the new album’s songs.
In the meantime I managed to finish my own new album, a songwriting project entitled “Sketches from the Book of the Dead”, which is scheduled for release on May 2nd. Nothing to do with either the Tibetan or the Egyptian version, much more related to Luis Buñuel’s though thankfully a little more fleshed-out than a list – which is all his was. I am in the throes of trying to set up some album launch shows for Australia in May and some selected dates in Europe for early June. Hopefully I’ll be able to arrange more extensive live performances later in the year once the commitment to Polly’s principle block of touring has been completed.
It’s quite coincidental that both Polly and I have come up with themed albums at a similar time and although they are quite different in their intent there are a couple of interesting cross-overs and we had quite similar interests in certain subjects (particularly the First World War) a couple of years ago when the body of the writing for her album was happening. I began writing songs for “Sketches from the Book of the Dead” about 4 years ago and picked up a head of steam from the middle of 2009. I have never considered myself a songwriter by vocation so it’s rather exciting and somewhat novel to find myself with an album on which I have written all the songs; but I have no intention of making a habit of it. I will happily revert to my normal job description in the future. The subject of the album is very specific and intense and I’m not convinced I would find another theme of such an intensity that could drive or inspire me to write so many songs.
Doubtful Sounds 