There Will Never Be a Better Time

“There Will Never Be a Better Time” is track four on Desert Sessions Volume 9: I See You Hearin’ Me, released September 23, 2003. Written by Chris Goss and PJ Harvey. Harvey sings it. Acoustic and spare, sitting somewhere between a lament and a threat. The Desert Sessions were never precious about genre. They pulled whoever was in the room that week and let the result be what it was. This one has Harvey’s fingerprints throughout, which means it is simultaneously more beautiful and more unsettling than it needs to be.

The Desert Sessions began in 1997 when Josh Homme brought musicians from Kyuss, Monster Magnet, and earthlings? to Rancho De La Luna in Joshua Tree, California. The studio was co-founded by Dave Catching and Fred Drake in 1993, built around rare instruments and a philosophy of creative isolation. The sessions rotated casts, held no set agenda, recorded for a week and released what stuck. Volumes 9 and 10 featured PJ Harvey, Dean Ween, Jeordie White, Alain Johannes, Troy Van Leeuwen, and Joey Castillo. The sessions were Homme’s laboratory. The music came out stranger and more interesting than it would have in a conventional studio.

Homme had come through Kyuss, the Palm Desert band whose lineage runs directly into Queens of the Stone Age. The Desert Sessions ran alongside QOTSA, alongside Eagles of Death Metal, alongside every other project Homme folded his energy into. Volume 9 was recorded February 8-15, 2003 at Rancho De La Luna. Chris Goss co-wrote and produced. Harvey’s contribution here is not a cameo. She wrote and sings the track. The collaboration between two artists working at the outer edge of their respective genres produced exactly the kind of song neither would have made alone.