PJ Harvey Shares Demo Track “Eugene Alone” From New Stage Play London Tide

In honor of the opening of the new play, London Tide, PJ Harvey has released the demo recording of the song she co-wrote for the play, titled “Eugene Alone.”

According to consequence.net, this track, which Harvey wrote alongside Ben Power, is sung from the perspective the character Eugene Wrayburn. This song comes about when the character, played by Jamael Westman, finds himself in the middle of a love triangle, and is about his guilt in this situation.

Harvey described her writing process on her website, stating “whenever I approached writing a song for a character I would discuss with Ben and [director Ian Rickson] what the character is going through at that time, and what emotion needed to be expressed through the music.” She continues, “we would talk about what had happened immediately before, what was going to happen next, time of day or night… As the play evolved we began to see how we could make the songs work hard for us in a way that meant that Ben could edit text from the body of the play as the song had expressed much of it.” (via consequence.net)

Working on this song for London Tide is far from the only thing keeping Harvey busy, however. According to consequence.net, she’ll be making appearances at several European music festivals before embarking on her North American tour this fall! This tour comes after the release of her 2023 album, I Inside the Old Year Dying.