Mick Harvey & Amanda Acevedo New Zealand Tour

Strange News Touring and Meow are pleased to announce a nationwide tour showcasing the exceptional duets of Mick Harvey and Amanda Acevedo. The tour will see them begin in the brooding harbour of Lyttleton, before travelling up to the capital city’s finest venue, enjoying a Small Hall Session in a mystery location in the Hawkes Bay, and hitting a cabaret bar tucked away in Whitianga before completing the adventure in Auckland.

When Mexican singer and filmmaker Amanda Acevedo and founding member of The Birthday Party and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Mick Harvey met several years ago, they had no idea they would eventually be travelling the world together. Mick was touring with his regular collaborator P.J. Harvey in Mexico City at the time, with the pandemic yet to hit.


Fast forward to 2021, with lockdown in full swing, Mick and Amanda began to share creative ideas and musical notions between Australia and Mexico. Acevedo suggested the pair collaborate on an album of duets, and the rest is sweet history.


“The first recording we did was amazing,” says Amanda, “our voices matched very well”.

Harvey expands, “…little by little it started to feel like something that could be an important project and gradually became the dominant focus for the following 18 months”

Phantasmagoria in Blue is a 14-track album of duets, with Harvey and Acevedo bringing new life to songs which were sourced from existing duets, songs that were never intended as duets, translations from Spanish, songs sung in Spanish, and a sprinkling of original compositions.


Following their initial long distance collaborative work, Harvey and Acevedo met up in Los Angeles so they could continue work in person. Harvey explains, “We aimed big, I wanted it to be a big production to match the level of ambition in the whole idea. I think it’s one of the best things I’ve been involved in, for a long time”.

Late last year they continued to work in Melbourne, with Harvey finished mixing the album, and coordinating the mastering with local legend Mikey Young, before Acevedo returned to Mexico.

Phantasmagoria in Blue is lush and sweeping in its emotional content and full of nourishment for the imagination and the senses, reworking and reinterpreting songs from artists as varied as Tim Buckley, Luis Eduardo Aute, Sibylle Baier, Silvio Rodriguez and Pat Benatar. Says Avecedo, “It was an unlikely connection and a very unlikely situation but it started working and has developed into a good friendship that I’m very grateful for. The album is a testimony to this.”