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The Hope Six Demolition Project

Record Details

Release
2016

PJ Harvey’s ninth studio album, The Hope Six Demolition Project, was released on April 15th 2016 through Island Records.

The Hope Six Demolition Project draws from several journeys undertaken by Harvey, who spent time in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C. over a four-year period. “When I’m writing a song I visualise the entire scene. I can see the colours, I can tell the time of day, I can sense the mood, I can see the light changing, the shadows moving, everything in that picture. Gathering information from secondary sources felt too far removed for what I was trying to write about. I wanted to smell the air, feel the soil and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with”, says Harvey.

The album was recorded in residency at London’s Somerset House. The exhibition, entitled ‘Recording in Progress’ saw Harvey, her band, producers Flood and John Parish, and engineers working within a purpose-built recording studio behind one-way glass, observed throughout by public audiences.

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Record Links

Record Tracklist

  1. The Community of Hope
    The Community of Hope

    Here’s the Hope Six Demolition Project
    stretching down to Benning Road
    a well-known pathway of death,
    (at least, that’s what I’m told).
    Here’s the one sit-down restaurant
    in Ward Seven. Nice.
    Okay, now this is just drug town,
    just zombies, but that’s just life.

    The Community of Hope.

    Here’s the highway to death and destruction,
    South Capitol is its name.
    The school looks like a shit hole –
    does that look like a nice place?
    Here’s the old mental institution
    now the Homeland Security base.
    Here’s God’s Deliverance Centre,
    a deli called M.L.K.

    The Community of Hope.

    They’re gonna’ put a Walmart here.

  2. The Ministry of Defence
    The Ministry of Defence

    This is the Ministry of Defence
    the stairs and walls are all that’s left
    mortar holes let through the air
    kids do the same thing everywhere;
    they’ve sprayed graffiti in Arabic
    and balanced sticks in human shit.

    This is the ministry of remains
    fizzy drinks cans, magazines
    broken glass, a white jawbone
    syringes, razors, a plastic spoon
    human hair, a kitchen knife
    and the ghost of a girl who runs and hides.

    There’s the bus depot to the right
    levelled like a building site
    those are the children’s cries from the dark
    these are the words written under the arch
    scratched in the wall in biro pen:
    This is how the world will end.

  3. A Line in the Sand
    A Line in the Sand

    How to stop the murdering? By now we should have learned –
    if we don’t then we’re sham, bad overwhelms the good.

    What I’ve seen – yes, it’s changed how I see humankind –
    I used to think progress was being made, that we could get something right.

    When we first got to the camp our supplies were not enough.
    I saw a displaced family eating a cold horse’s hoof.

    We set up tents, brought in water, air drops were dispersed.
    I saw people kill each other just to get there first.

    What we did? Why we did it? I make no excuse –
    we got things wrong, but we also did some good.

    I believe we have a future to do something good.

    Enough is enough.
    A line in the sand.
    Seven or eight thousand
    killed by hand.
    They stepped off the edge
    they did not step back.
    If we haven’t learnt by now
    then we’re a sham.

  4. Chain of Keys
    Chain of Keys

    Fifteen keys hang on a chain.
    The chain is joined and forms a ring.
    The ring is in a woman’s hand.
    She’s walking on the dusty ground.
    The dusty ground’s a dead end track.
    The neighbours won’t be coming back.
    Fifteen gardens overgrown.
    Fifteen houses falling down.

    The woman’s old and dressed in black.
    She keeps her hands behind her back.
    Numbers painted on the doors.
    Posters on the locked up church.
    Imagine what her eyes have seen.
    We ask but she won’t let us in.
    A key so simple and so small;
    how can it mean no chance at all?
    A key – a promise, or a wish;
    how can it mean such hopelessness?

    A circle is broken, she says.

  5. River Anacostia
    River Anacostia

    Oh, my Anacostia –
    do not sigh, do not weep –
    beneath the overpass
    your saviour’s waiting patiently
    walking on the water,
    that flow with poisons
    from the naval yard.
    He’s talking to the fallen reeds.
    What will become of us?

    A small, red sun makes way for night –
    trails away like a tail light.
    Is that Jesus on the water
    talking to the fallen trees?
    What will become of us?

  6. Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln
    Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln

    At the refreshments stand,
    a boy throws out his hands
    as if to feed the starlings
    but really he throws nothing –
    it’s just to watch them jump.
    See the people coming,
    lumbering over the grass
    to squeeze into plastic chairs,

    near the memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln.

    Three notes, a bugle call –
    a black man in overalls
    arrives to empty the trash,
    hauls it to a metal hatch,
    a doorway opens up
    to the underworld.
    The boy throws empty hands –
    the starlings jump,

    near the memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln.

  7. The Orange Monkey
    The Orange Monkey

    A restlessness took hold my brain,
    and questions I could not hold back.
    An orange monkey on a chain
    on a bleak uneven track

    told me that to understand
    you must travel back in time.
    I took a plane to a foreign land
    and said, I’ll write down what I find.

    Beneath a mountain’s jagged shelves
    cloaked with snow and shadows sheer
    plates tipped up upon themselves
    the pain of 50 million years

    and mules and goats were running wild.
    A happy chaos carried on
    and old men and young boys smiled,
    and worked until the day was gone.

    Packs of sandy-coloured dogs
    walked streets that looked like building sites,
    but piles of rocks and dust and smog
    could not block out a different light.

    When I returned I ran to meet
    the monkey, but his face had changed.
    He stood before me on two feet.
    The track was now a motorway.

  8. Medicinals
    Medicinals

    I was walking through the National Mall
    thinking about medicinals and how they used to grow there
    when the ground was a marshland, undisturbed by human hands,
    and I heard their voices;

    the sumac said, We are always here
    the witch hazel – We are always here
    the sassafras – We are always here
    bluestem grasses – Always here.

    I looked about, what did I see?
    Medicinals growing around me rising from the gravel.
    The sumac and the witch hazel, come to soothe our pain, our sores
    come to soothe our troubles.

    The sumac said, We are always here
    the witch hazel – We are always here
    the sassafras – We are always here
    bluestem grasses – Always here.

    But do you see that woman
    sitting in the wheelchair
    with her Redskins cap on backwards
    and her plastic bags swinging –
    from inside a paper wrapper
    she sips from a bottle
    a new painkiller
    for the native people.

  9. The Ministry of Social Affairs
    The Ministry of Social Affairs

    See them sitting in the rain
    as the sky is darkening.
    Three lines of traffic edge past
    The Ministry of Social Affairs.

    At a junction, on the ground
    an amputee and a pregnant hound
    sit by young men with withered arms
    as if death had already passed

    through every alleyway and left
    a million beggars’ silhouettes
    near where the money-changers sit
    by their locked glass cabinets.

    What’s happened? Let’s go and ask
    The Ministry of Social Affairs,
    near where the money-changers sit
    by their locked glass cabinets.

  10. The Wheel
    The Wheel

    a revolving wheel of metal chairs
    hung on chains, squealing

    four little children flying out
    a blind man sings in arabic

    now you see them, now you don’t
    the children vanish behind a vehicle

    now you see them, now you don’t
    faces, limbs, a bouncing skull

    little children, don’t disappear
                        I heard it was twenty-eight thousand
    lost upon a revolving wheel
                        I heard it was twenty-eight thousand
    all that’s left after a year
                        I heard it was twenty-eight thousand
    a faded face, the trace of an ear
                        I heard it was twenty-eight thousand

    a tableau of the missing
    tied to the government building

    thousands of sun-bleached photographs
    fading with the roses

  11. Dollar, Dollar
    Dollar, Dollar

    A boy stares through the glass.
    He’s saying, Dollar, dollar.
    Three lines of traffic pass.
    We’re trapped inside our car.
    His voice says, Dollar, dollar.

    I turn to you to ask
    for something we can offer.
    Three lines of traffic pass.
    We pull away so fast
    all my words get swallowed.

    In the mirror glass
    a face pock-marked and hollow
    is saying, Dollar, dollar.
    I can’t look through or past
    the face saying Dollar, dollar
    the face pock-marked and hollow
    staring from the glass.