Nick Mulvey now returns with ‘Dark Harvest Pt. 2,’ completing his journey of cyclical healing and self-realisation with an album that finds peace in surrender and illumination in faith, transforming inner reckoning into radiant release.

Stream: ‘Dark Harvest Pt. 2’ – Nick Mulvey

We often ruminate on music as a provision of strength, community, and otherworldly healing.

Nick Mulvey understands this, designing spaces for self-realisation through his work – unearthing deep-seated feelings and creating a safe foundation to ask ourselves the questions we’re otherwise too afraid to address.

Mulvey orbits close to the sun with Dark Harvest Pt. 1 and Pt. 2. Where Pt. 1 represented a ploughing of the land, and a preparation of inner-recognition, Pt. 2 symbolises the penultimate harvest – the fruits of his labour rising to the surface for spiritual awakening.

Dark Harvest Pt. 2 - Nick Mulvey — Dark Harvest Pt. 2 – Nick Mulvey

Dark Harvest has been a thorough journey through self-recognition, spirituality, and deep healing. After our deep dive of Dark Harvest Pt. 1 upon its release earlier this year, Pt. 2 arrives as the siren song to the call. Opening on “Every Open Heart,” Mulvey re-introduces Dark Harvest on an ever-expansive landscape of textures and layers. From the percussive rhythms of “Supernatural Healing” to the slow meditative hums of “Handing It Over,” Dark Harvest Pt. 2 creates a world of light, dark, and everything in between.

Instead of shying away from the darkness, Mulvey embraces it in all its unknown – allowing us to see the light passing through the cracks, like the sunbeam glistening through the leaves. Mulvey channels these feelings of surrender and faith through the music, projecting the message like a prayer and visceral experience for its audience.

Mulvey himself has been nominated for the Mercury Prize twice throughout his career, demonstrating his established position as an artist. The acclaimed songwriter has seen much during his time in the industry, but the Dark Harvest albums represent more than just his latest – they are his very first to be released on his own record label, Supernatural Records.

Atwood Magazine sat down with Mulvey as he prepared for the last few shows of his tour. With a couple days to go before Dark Harvest Pt. 2 (out now), Mulvey reflected on its conception, his progression since making the music, and how his relationship with the music has changed after touring the material.

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:: stream/purchase Dark Harvest, Pt. 2 here ::

:: connect with Nick Mulvey here ::

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Nick Mulvey © Liam Maxwell — Nick Mulvey © Dom Palmer

A CONVERSATION WITH NICK MULVEY

Atwood Magazine: Congratulations on the record and the ongoing tour! How has it been?

Nick Mulvey: These last weeks have been a strange time for me. It’s been mixed – I’m playing to audiences each night and that feels so good, but it’s edgy too. I’m touring with a wrist injury that has taken it’s toll, it’s a really tough moment for touring musicians and it takes a lot to be on the road, and also with the upcoming release there’s been a fair amount behind the scenes to deal with. Having said all of that, seeing my fans, showing up together out in that field between rightness and wrong and meeting with each other, our feelings and hopefully something bigger than any of us can explain, I am fully at home. I feel it’s what I am born to do. It’s hugely rewarding, worth every effort and something I don’t take for granted

What has been the best moment of tour so far?

Nick Mulvey: There’s been many. Every show is unique which I love. They are all special and my fans lift me high, I just love interacting, singing together and the unified moment in which everyone present to the presence of God, of love, joy, harmony. I am a big believe that God loves music.

In Barcelona recently I was playing “Fever to the Form” and the crowd spontaneously started clapping – in that Spanish way, that flamenco ‘compass’ – and the whole audience, as one, locked in with me and my strumming; everyone lit up and ecstatic; the staccato percussion of the claps rippling through the arena… we lifted off. Beautiful.

Have the songs on Dark Harvest Pt. 1 taken on a new life after getting to play them live on tour?

Nick Mulvey: Yes, they deepen in different ways… as I live with the songs; as I strip them back to just me and guitar (it’s a solo tour this year); and as my audience sing them back to me.

The song “Dark Harvest” has gone on a good journey – I play it now on a low-strung baritone electric guitar, fed through delicious reverbs, and it just has this gravity and presence. Befitting of the song’s themes. I wish I’d found this sound back when we were making the record…

Where Dark Harvest Pt. 1 was the ploughing of the land, Dark Harvest Pt. 2 stands more as the harvest. After having released and played Pt. 1 - do you feel like you’re “harvesting” anything new coming into the release of Pt. 2?

Nick Mulvey: Part 1 I think of as the inhale, and Part 2 I think of as the exhale. Part 1 was the painful stripping back, the pruning of the branch, and Part 2 is the first fruits – it’s not quite the same as a fully matured harvest, it’s a vulnerable moment, when the opening of the young crops get to be shared and tasted by the community.

Personally, I find it terrifying to release work as vulnerable as this and it’s really showing me things- making me ask the question “Where am I seeking acceptance? From the audience? Or from my Heavenly Father?” Literally, when I walk out onstage, in the opening song, lately I observe the ways I look to the crowd to gauge how they are receiving my music, if they are loving it, and I try instead to turn my awareness to God who already accepts me. In this way, over the last shows, I feel myself being cleansed and purified, so that I am not seeking that approval from the World as much. Or at all. So that I am playing to an audience of One…”

Both Dark Harvest albums deal with your relationship with spirituality. If you’re comfortable sharing, how has this changed before, during and after writing these albums?

Nick Mulvey: Well, to be candid, I gave my life to Jesus Christ in 2023. I came to the realisation of the fullness of a life lived in Him, you might say. He came and saved my sorry ass is another way to put it! This surrender, this relief, and His infinite kindness has inspired me so deeply. Put it this way, it used to take me three years to write one album, and I’ve written four in the last two years since coming to Jesus. He has cleaned out so much in my life, I’m more free to create now, and I know now who, fundamentally, I am singing to and for.

So Dark Harvest Parts 1 & 2 are songs written in the first flush of this new life lived with Jesus, lit with the newness of this salvation. Since then, over the last two years, my path has deepened and I’ve been tested a lot. It’s gotten trickier, God has sent me a lot of challenges. Maybe Satan has, too. Perhaps that’s how you know you’re on track.

For me, both of these albums invoke a very distinct visceral world. If you could define these records (and this period of your life) by a feeling, scent or memory - what would it be?

Nick Mulvey: Let’s go with scent… To me, Dark Harvest, both Parts 1 & 2, are cedar wood, musk, tobacco, vetiver… Deep and rich flavours, woody and earthed.

I’m very interested in your background in ethnomusicology! Can you share a bit more about the influence this has had in your music?

Nick Mulvey: As a youngster I trained in ethnomusicology at university in London and I just hoovered up so many influences and sounds. I just love this wide world of music that we live in, from joyous choruses of humans singing praises to their Maker, to shamanic sounds from the deep and guttural; slick and produced excellence or raw and rough from the streets or the field. It’s a cliche, but there’s only two types of music – good and bad – and I love good music. I’m open to all genres and interested in all human expression, however it comes. I do have my tastes of course, but I think the open mindedness, the curiosity and the inherent respectfulness the ethnomusicologist has towards musical expression, has been instilled in me. I’m grateful for this because it’s allowed a wider range of music to influence my creativity, so I can make music with greater originality.

Is there anything that you think “Western” or music found in mainstream media should learn from these practices?

Nick Mulvey: Which practices do we mean? One thing I think is that in western music the song is usually pre-eminent and that’s partially because songs are more easily products in our capitalist world. More easily packaged and distributed and consumed. But there is so much more… Lately, since my Dark Harvest albums, I’ve been on a journey away from ‘song form,’ making music that is longer in length (every track is 15 mins long) and less bound to verse-bridge-chorus forms. It’s been healthy. Watch this space.

These are also the first albums you’ve released under your own record label. Tell me about that! What has that meant for you on your journey as an artist?

Nick Mulvey: This is new and evolving, there’s more to say so ask me again in the future as it’s very early days but what I can say is that it became painfully obvious I needed to take this area of my music into my own hands and due to a change in management and lots of restructuring with some powerful allies and support I was able to put things in place that I hope will mean that Supernatural Records is a label for the people. Releasing my work and down the line, who knows how it may become part of my legacy. I’m in it for the long haul.

Is there a song on the record that you’re particularly proud of?

Nick Mulvey: I love them all! The opening lines of “East of Eden’ I’m really proud of; the song “For Real” – I love the simplicity and sheer energy in the guitar picking patterns. The music is sublime and I can say this, immodest as it may sound, because I believe the music has come from beyond me; it has been ‘given’ to me and it’s source is divine. Not mine. Although I have indeed created it, and worked with excellent collaborators to do so, I also acknowledge the deeper source that this music comes from. You know, my paternal Grandmother, Dora, a religious woman and a talented concert pianist back in the 1930s and 40s, is known to have said, “My gifts are God-given. Immodesty would be a sin!” Yes Grandma.

I really like “I Want To See You.” Can you speak more about the influences and inspirations behind that track?

Nick Mulvey: This song is a cover of a worship song called “Open the Eyes of My Heart” written by Paul Baloche. It’s a worship song. I was having a difficult morning with my young daughter, tantrums and big emotions, and I happened upon a clip of a singer, Jordan G Welch, in church, singing this song and it caught both of us off guard. I remember brushing her hair and both of us kind of exhaling, giving up and coming down into our hearts again. Since then I would sing the song into my phone and send it to her when I was away on tour. She loves it. I thought I would include it on my album; I like how the two levels are clear – words sung to both another person and to God.