PJ Harvey

All About Eve (Soundtrack) PJ Harvey

PJ Harveys score is for the 2019 adaptation of All About Eve by the Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove. Van Hove has form here: he directed David Bowie’s Lazarus in 2015. For this story of a legendary Broadway star who is eclipsed by a manipulative aspiring actress, van Hove gave Harvey an open brief which yielded the 12 songs here, totalling 34 minutes of music. Eight of the songs are under two-and-a-half minutes; the shortest, “Cadenza”, runs for just over a minute. There are two vocal pieces – performed by the production’s leads, Gillian Anderson and Lily James. Clearly, 
this is not a PJ Harvey album such as we’re used to.

As it transpires, All About Eve partly recalls Thom Yorke’s soundtrack for Suspiria – another largely instrumental project that amplified the artist’s gifts for conjuring moods full of murky unease, fragile beauty and wistful melancholia with only the briefest sketches. There is also something of the pensive soundtrack recordings made by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis – dominated by sparse piano playing and sickly, scraping drones.