PJ Harvey&John Parish-A Woman A Man Walked By

On the musical side, A Woman A Man Walked By features additional musical contributions from Polly's close associate Eric Drew Feldman, the California-based drummer Carla Azar (from the left-field band Autolux), and the Italian guitarist Giovanni Ferrario. Quite apart from the cracked time signatures and shifting arrangements that occasionally give its songs the air of creations pulled from its creators' irrational, emotional, sometimes almost dreamlike thoughts, it's also streaked with touches that push it even further beyond the orthodox: on The Soldier, a ringing ukulele mends with the merest frosting of piano to absolutely haunting effect; 16.15.14 features a banjo part that lends it the flavour of sepia-tinted Appalachian folk music; elsewhere, there are parts played on wonderfully arcane and obsolescent keyboards.

That said, at the start of the album there is the aforementioned Black Hearted Love, the album's lead-off single - a gloriously straight-ahead rock song that seems to have taken both of them by surprise. "Like all the things that become your favourites," says John, "it happened quite easily and quite accidentally. There was no effort in writing a simple, straight-ahead rock song; it happened by itself. I can be very moved by something that is a really quite simple, quite straight-ahead piece music. I know that's not what I'm known for, but those are often my favourite pieces."
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