Amanda Acevedo and Mick Harvey: 'This project seemed to have something that had legs'

The pair first met several years ago when multi-instrumentalist Harvey, known for his work with The Birthday Party and Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, was performing in Mexico City as part of PJ Harvey’s band. They remained in touch via monthly emails before, Acevedo says, it “gradually became a bit more” when she suggested they collaborate on a song while the world was locked down during the pandemic.

“For me, just the idea of recording a song was like a present, maybe just like a private thing to have some gift from him was special,” the singer explains. “I wanted something meaningful but I also didn’t imagine it would become a project. I thought we would record one song and I even said to him, ‘You could record it on your phone. It doesn’t need to be a big production, just something I can have’.”

However, once they recorded the first song via file-sharing, they both found they enjoyed it so much they felt emboldened to continue. “It sounded really good, our voices worked really well together, and it was really interesting all the discussions we had through emails, so Mick came up with another idea,” says Acevedo.

“It was just for fun, really,” Harvey says. “People had a lot of time on their hands. I’d entered the pandemic with an empty diary. I got from from the UK in February 2020 and it was the first time in over 40 years I had no bookings and I thought I’ll sit down and write the book everyone keeps telling me to write and work on a couple of film ideas and within a couple of weeks that’s really what I was doing because there was nothing else to do. I didn’t have any gigs to get cancelled.

“For a lot of artistic people, it was very difficult. It depends what you rely on for your income, but for me it was a great opportunity to step back and take stock.”

Initially he juggled four different projects that he had “invented out of thin air” to give himself something to do, but after the “first couple of fun things” with Acevedo, it soon took precedence as “it seemed to have something that had legs”. “It sounded really good and I was enjoying collaborating with Amanda and working on ideas with her and it just grew.”

Acevedo says the first couple of songs they decided to cover were “just random picks” but once they settled on a style that was working for them, they “chose the songs more thoughtfully that would go with the theme or with ideas”. She cites their duet on Tim Buckley’s Phantasmagoria in 2 as “the moment when we realised it was actually a serious thing, that was when we decided that it needed to be out there in the world”.

Acevedo’s penchant for the songs of Buckley, Leonard Cohen and Lee Hazlewood was influential. “There were a whole lot of people I’d never heard of too, like Jackson C Frank and Sibylle Baier,” says Harvey. “So I kept being introduced to (what I thought were) quite obscure people who I actually discovered were quite popular. As you get older you don’t look out as much, but kids these days are just looking everywhere, especially if they’ve got unusual tastes, which is great. I’m discovering now that the resources that one has to search for things is fantastic.”

“It’s funny because I found Tim Buckley and Lee Hazlewood because of Mick,” says Acevedo. “I heard his covers of their songs, that when I found them and I started researching them. It was interesting that he introduced them to me and I can teach him a few things about them. He has been listening to their stuff for a very long time and for me everything is new and exciting, so that combination of his respect for these artists with my enthusiasm.”

Harvey was also keen that they wrote their own songs but settled on this album being “mostly covers” for practicality’s sake. “We had quite a few original things going around after a while, a couple of them have ended up on the record, but we have been writing together a bit as well,” he says, hinting that they might come out in future.

Recording the album in the US and Australia after lockdown was lifted, they have since play ed a handful of shows in Norway in May, which Harvey says made them “pretty close as friends”. They’re now looking forward to a UK tour. “It’ll be interesting because I’m a kind of introverted presenter, I’m not really like a flamboyant frontman,” he says. “What I’ve always done in every band is I’m just there making the music work, so when I’m a singer, that’s kind of what I do too, I’m just concerned to make the music work and if I have to sing at the same time that’s an extra burden, but finding a way to be a bit more like a presenter would be nice for the audience. They may get lucky!”

Phantasmagoria in Blue is out now. Mick Harvey and Amanda Acevedo play at The Old Woollen, Leeds on September 13.