Out of This World
Song has featured in physicist Brian Cox’s speaking tours
PJ Harvey‘s last album found her singing about a fictionalized version of her home country. For her next project, she’s headed as far there as humanly (or inhumanly) possible.
On her somber new single, “Voyager,” she imagines what the voice of the Voyager 2, a space probe NASA launched in 1977, would say. “Force fields, high winds, cold moons, bright rings, hear my signal, will you follow?” she sings, her voice sounding spectral with glitches. “Look back at us as a speck of dirt.” Keyboards undulate between two notes, quivering like a fading signal, as she sings, “Choose light, choose love.” Strings swell around her as her voice lifts heavenward at the end. The song features in particle physicist and BBC personality Brian Cox‘s Emergence world tour. A seven-inch of the song is available for preorder.
“I was excited for the challenge to compose a song in the ‘voice’ of Voyager 2,” Harvey said in a statement. “I have long been fascinated by the spacecraft and its journey, and asked myself what it might say to us if it could? This was an inspiring route to take to develop the song.”
