from nme.com
PRETTY BUSY POLLY!
PJ HARVEY has confirmed that she will record with QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE, as revealed on NME.COM some weeks ago.
The star is also planning to play at this year's Carling Weekend, NME.COM can exclusively reveal.
Harvey has been Down Under on the Big Day Out with Queens where she spoke to NME.COM about her plans for a busy 2003, which will include touring Europe and putting the finishing touches to her new album.
"I?m doing 'The Desert Sessions' with Queens in a couple of weeks' time," she told NME.COM. "After >Big Day Out I?ll be in >California for a month, and then I?ll be back in England, continuing to do some writing and getting ready to do shows in August and then go straight into the studio to finish up the record."
Harvey has been "good friends" with Queens for two years, and is looking forward to getting into the studio with them in the desert.
She continued: "I think all of 'The Desert Sessions' only last a week. You?re kind of given this; ?We have a week, there are four people here, we have to make an album?. Everybody brings one or two ideas and then you all work on it together."
From there, the star will set herself an autumn deadline to finish work on her own album, the follow-up to the hugely-acclaimed, 'Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea', which featured Radiohead's Thom Yorke.
This time around, there are no plans for guest vocalists. 40 songs have been written at her home, with the album set to feature around ten. Currently untitled, it is due late this year or early 2004.
"I?ve been gradually accumulating songs," she said. "I take a small amount of recording gear around with me and the songs will start off as just myself and a guitar and some very primitive form of drum machine. "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."
UK fans will see PJ Harvey live again in the summer. She is planning to tour towards the end of August, and is in the process of finalising festival slots. At this stage, The Carling Weekend is the most likely option.
However, any fans expecting Harvey to play a new song titled '9/11' at the shows will be left disappointed. Despite feverous internet rumours last week that she's written a song based on her experience of the US terror attacks, Pollysays the first she heard of it was on NME.COM.
She joked: "It doesn?t exist! I?ve never written a song called ?9/11?, and I?d never. You can put an end to that for me! I don?t know where that came from. I saw there was some little thing in NME.COM about it and I thought ?Huh? That?s the first I?ve heard about it?."
PJ 
