PJ Harvey - Let England Shake
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CD Details
Artist: PJ HarveyEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown)
CD Release Date: 2011-02-15
Music Label: Vagrant Records
Soundtracks:
- Let England Shake
- The Last Living Rose
- The Glorious Land
- The Words That Maketh Murder
- All and Everyone
- On Battleship Hill
- England
- In The Dark Places
- Bitter Branches
- Hanging In The Wire
- Written on the Forehead
- The Colour of the Earth
Music reviews of Let England Shake
Music Review: PJ Harvey - "England's dancing days are done"
Rating: 5 Stars
It is entirely appropriate on an album largely dedicated to the theme of "war" and the carnage of battle to compare Polly Harvey to the musical equivalent of the army scout. She is an artist who bravely advances out into the territory miles in front of the battalions behind her keenly aware of the dangers this involves but nonetheless fearless in terms of seeking an opening into new and lusher pastures.. Harvey ticks all the "i" boxes. She is the most inventive and intuitive musician operating in UK music and for that matter one of the most intriguing artists on the planet. Her now famous appearance in front of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the BBC's Andrew Marr show has been commented on widely standing bedecked in feather boa's with a tape of the Four Lads' novelty hit "Istanbul Not Constantinople" looping over the excellent xylophone riffs of the title track of this new album (although the Four lads sample has now been dropped). It undoubtedly cemented her fearsome reputation as a blues-rock sorceress with a direct line to the dark forces and subversion. Harvey has of course dismissed the myth making around her but there is no denying her impeccable musical journey informed by such great artists such as Captain Beefheart and Patti Smith and which has included stellar collaborations with Nick Cave and Thom Yorke.
"Let England Shake" marks another stage in one of the most fascinating musical journeys in rock music. Harvey is a dissonant and challenging musical chameleon able to change the colour and tone of her music from album to album and this work in particular stands as almost a complete break from the earlier brutality of albums such as "Dry". The fabulous dimension is how good the songwriting is on LES despite being an album haunted particularly by the ghosts of the First World War it is packed with "great tunes". Her lyrical images are striking particularly in the blues lament "Last Living rose" starting with the great lines "Godamn Europeans, take me back to beautiful England/ and the great and filthy mess of ages/and battered books and fog rolling down behind the mountains/ on the graveyards of Dead Sea captains". The gorgeous echo laden ballad "All and Everyone" builds with huge force and is strewn with war and deathly imagery over its six minute journey. "This glorious land" starts off with the bugle signalling a charge and this is followed by one of the best melodic songs she has ever written. "Written on the forehead" bares some comparison to the ambience achieved on Mercury Rev "Deserters songs" as it floats over a detectable reggae beat drawn which injects the words "Blood and Fire" while the refrain "Let it burn let it burn" is repeated over and over. It hardly sounds like a barrel of laughs but it is a beautiful song. The last song "The colour of the earth" is centred on the shambolic Dardenelles campaign of 1915 and the on-going Australian open wound that is Galipoli a sort of war folk song with an almost Pogues flavour.
Granted "Let England Shake" is on times a strident blood tinged album about anger, destruction and war but it is neither overtly politically "in your face" or full of screaming cacophony. It balances skillfully dancing between the twin dangers of being a patriotic tome or equally tolerating any xenophobia. It is a warts and all address to us all on some very big themes not least on the largely acoustic song "England" where despite the regret strewn through the songs course she admits "Like water, like air/To you, England, I cling/Undaunted, never failing love for you". The album is also packed full of inspired touches such as the lift of the line from Eddie Cohrane "gonna take my problems to the united nations" in "The words that maketh murder" to the Kate Bush like beauty of "Battleship Hill". As ever Harveys' long time collaborators John Parrish and producer Flood are all over album like a rash in a very positive way.
Every now and again an album comes along that amounts to a gamechanger, after it is released nothing is ever quite the same and it becomes a reference point for other artists as a well of inspiration and a catalyst for new directions. P J Harvey's "Let England shake" is one such album. Some big names are due to release albums in 2011 and it will be fascinating to watch whether anyone can match this astonishing record since it will require a small miracle.
Description of Let England Shake
2011 album from the critically adored British singer/songwriter. Let England Shake was recorded in a 19th Century church in Dorset, on a cliff-top overlooking the sea. It was created with a cast of musicians including such long-standing allies as Flood, John Parish, and Mick Harvey. What is remarkable about Let England Shake is bound up with its music, its abiding atmosphere and in particular, its words. If Harvey's past work might seem to draw of direct emotional experience, this album is rather different. Its songs centre on both her home country, and events further afield in which it has embroiled itself. The lyrics return, time and again, to the matter of war, the fate of the people who must do the fighting, and events separated by whole ages, from Afghanistan to Gallipoli. The album they make up is not a work of protest, nor of strait-laced social or political comment. It brims with the mystery and magnetism in which she excels. But her lyric-writing in particular has arrived at a new, breathtaking place, in which the human aspects of history are pushed to the foreground. Put simply, not many people make records like this.Alternative Rock CDs
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