Mick Harvey - Sketches From The Book Of The Dead (LP) - Gold Vinyl

Mick Harvey’s Sketches From The Book Of The Dead arrived in 2011 on Mute, and it still feels like one of those records you pull from the shelf when the house is quiet and you’re ready to sit with whatever the night gives you. Harvey had stepped away from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds a couple of years earlier, and the change seems to have distilled something in his writing. The title hints at it. These songs circle memory, loss and the stories we tell the dead, but they do it with a calm hand, a dry wit and arrangements that never rush to the obvious crescendo.

Harvey’s background looms in all the best ways. As a founding member of The Birthday Party and the Bad Seeds, and the translator of Serge Gainsbourg’s songbook on Intoxicated Man and Pink Elephants, he has a knack for turning dark material into something elegant. Here he produced the album himself for Mute and, true to form, plays a lot of the instruments. The palette is spare, mostly guitars, piano and organ, brushed drums, a little violin and double bass shading around the edges. Nothing showy, nothing crowding the vocal. You can hear the room around the instruments, which suits the writing. It feels like letters left on the kitchen table, read out loud.

October Boy is the song most people point to, and with good reason. Written for his late friend and bandmate Rowland S. Howard, it lands as both portrait and farewell. There is affection in the detail, but there is also that matter of fact tone Harvey does so well, the way he lets a line sit without underlining it. Even if you came in cold, you’d feel the history in the pauses. It is one of those tributes that earns its place alongside the subject’s own work, which is saying something when the subject is Howard.

What’s striking across the album is the patience. Melodies move like old photographs being turned over in the hand. A chorus might not arrive until you’ve lived in the verse for a minute, and when it does it tends to open a window rather than kick down a door. The writing leans on small images, the way rain smears a window, the weight of a keepsake, the quiet in a family house after the guests leave. There are shades of country noir and French chanson in the corners, a reminder of Harvey’s wider range, yet the mood stays grounded. If you’ve followed his work with PJ Harvey, especially around Let England Shake in 2011, you’ll recognise the steady sense of space, the trust in simple parts to carry heavy words.

He also refuses to make grief grand. The production is dry and close, vocals forward, lyrics clear. You hear the scrape of a pick and the creak of a pedal. These choices matter on vinyl. Sketches From The Book Of The Dead vinyl puts air around the instruments in a way streaming rarely manages, and the quiet songs feel even more intimate. If you’re crate digging in a Melbourne record store or browsing vinyl records Australia wide, keep an eye out. The sleeve art fits the music, and the pressing lets the guitar harmonics bloom without turning brittle. It is the kind of record that rewards a clean needle and a late hour.

Reception at the time was respectful and steady rather than breathless, which suits the album. Critics noted the restraint, and fans adopted favourites that have stuck in set lists. October Boy became a touchstone, but the album plays best as a suite, each song a different angle on remembrance. Harvey has said in interviews that he prefers clarity to flourish, and you can hear that philosophy everywhere here. The rhythm section is there to serve the line, not to show off. A small organ figure might do more emotional lifting than a wall of strings.

For anyone getting serious about Mick Harvey vinyl, this sits in a sweet spot between the Gainsbourg translations and the more fragmented Four (Acts of Love) that followed. It is also a fine starting point if you only know him through Cave. The voice is wryer, the humour drier, the storytelling tighter. If you want to buy Mick Harvey records online, this one is easy to recommend, and it pairs well with other Mick Harvey albums on vinyl when you want a night of low light and luminous detail. Pull it from the shelf, pour something gentle and let the songs do what they were built to do. They don’t demand. They just stay with you.