Good pic., white chalk again. Are the feathers related to war/cowardice?

Yikes at the DM history sau, unsurprising though.

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=Polar1One

So happy to read all of the positive reviews this album is getting! As far as the negative reviews, is it me or do they seem incredibly lazy? There seems to be no solid criticism from these critics, i.e. "I don't like it because it doesn't sound like (insert ROM, TBYML, ITD?, or UUH here)." It bothers me to no end when a "critic" tries to pigeonhole an artist b/c of an affinity to their past work. If you don't like it, fine....just have a thoughtful response as to why you don't like it, rather than "Meh, not my cup of tea."

A rule I used to follow years ago when I was a music critic: Opinions are like a$$holes. Everyone has one, so make sure yours doesn't stink.

_________________
Did I tell you, you're divine?

How's this for a review? :-) From the NZ Herald:

PJ Harvey album hit with veterans

By Kieran Nash

War veterans are more usually associated with the crooning of Vera Lynn or with the boogie-woogie of the Andrews Sisters than edgy folk-rock.

But songs about Anzac troops by acclaimed British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey have got the thumbs-up from military men in New Zealand.

Harvey's new album, Let England Shake, is out tomorrow. Many of its lyrics are about war. Three songs reference Anzac troops, and two feature aspects of the ill-fated 1915 Gallipoli campaign.

Members of the Pt Chevalier RSA in Auckland this week welcomed the songs - and even invited Harvey to perform for them. Angus McKellar, who served as a navy midshipman in World War II, described The Colour of the Earth - about a man remembering his fallen Anzac comrades - as a "good catchy tune".

"If they do tour we would love to see them here."

The 86-year-old said remembering wars "keeps people honoured. People should remember their history and where they come from. Lest we forget. And that's what it's all about - we don't forget them."

Harvey has been reluctant to talk about the songs during publicity for the album, but told Britain's Sunday Times: "I thought of Gallipoli because of the sheer scale of the disaster.

It was a catastrophe and so badly handled. It seemed to resonate with what's happening now."

Listening to the album was emotional for Vietnam veteran Bill Ashdown, who served in two Anzac battalions. The 64-year-old said anyone who had been in active service could relate to The Colour Of The Earth, and added: "It's a little bit of an honour that other people see these things as something sacred." Ashdown said the album was a "form of poetry".

"Clearly it's done with respect and it's a beautiful art form which can explain these things much better than I can."

Soldiers who had been in active service would connect to such material in a way no civilian could, he said.

"Any way that we can get the message across of the horror and futility of war is important."

Jane Yee, promotions manager for Harvey's record company, Universal, said she was thrilled the veterans enjoyed the songs.

"We will definitely pass that feedback on and make sure she gets that message."

By Kieran Nash

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/ar ... d=10705883

_________________
Wiggins is so superbly unassuming, he looks like he's about to say 'Pop the gold medal in the post, I'm nipping out for some biscuits'

Mark Steel

From beehivecity.com

By Adam Cotton

Polly Jean Harvey has to be, and if not should be, one of the most respected artists that England has ever produced.

Despite her mainstream and commercial success, including the 2001 Mercury Music Prize, seven Brit Award Nominations, five Grammy Award Nominations and two futher Mercury prize nominations, she has held her ‘cult status’, never ploughing the same musical furrow, always the risk taker.

Her last studio outing ‘White Chalk’ in 2007, a fragile piano led record, was very personal and very emotive. On ‘Let England Shake’ we find Harvey no less emotive but sounding bolder, as she tackles the social issues of fair old England.

On announcing the new album she closely followed up with a live performance on the Andrew Marr Show, playing an auto-harp in full feather headdress. She told Marr that, “my biggest fear was to replicate something I had done before.” Let England Shake proves that after eight studio albums there is still no danger of that being the case.

On the title track opener, “The West’s asleep, let England shake /Weighted down with silent dead,’ she muses, while an insistent chime of a xylophone joins the auto-harp to great effect. The scene is set for what is to be a volume of songs full of both powerful subject matter and imagery.

Recorded in a 19th century church in Dorset, on a clifftop overlooking the sea, PJ has again enlisted the help of long time and trusted collaborators, Flood, John Parish and Mick Harvey. Beyond the music however it is the vividly strong and unique atmosphere that is created that really comes to the fore. The lyrics are, to not put too fine a point on it, centred on war and death, both in England and further afield, in Afghanistan and Gallipoli.

‘The Words That Maketh Murder’ is a thought provoking, juxtaposition of jaunty rhythmic chanting against a background of tragic lyrical content. “Ive seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat/Arms and legs were in the trees/ Ive done things I want to forget, “Harvey professes. She concludes the track with the mantra of “What if I take my problem to the United Nations?”

The soaring vocal tones of ’On Battleship Hill’ shifts the mood once more, almost paganistic in its style, coupled with the enchanting sound of the sustained guitar.

To say this album evokes deep and strong emotion doesn’t even begin to tell half the tale. Once again Harvey as evolved, pushed on, and in essence has channelled the troubled position England finds itself in today.

PJ Harvey’s performance of ‘Let England Shake’ on The Andrew Marr Show can be found below…

http://www.beehivecity.com/television/a ... hake32112/

_________________
Wiggins is so superbly unassuming, he looks like he's about to say 'Pop the gold medal in the post, I'm nipping out for some biscuits'

Mark Steel

Some very special feedback ..

http://www.nzherald.co.nz

PJ Harvey album hit with veterans

War veterans are more usually associated with the crooning of Vera Lynn or with the boogie-woogie of the Andrews Sisters than edgy folk-rock.

But songs about Anzac troops by acclaimed British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey have got the thumbs-up from military men in New Zealand.

Harvey's new album, Let England Shake, is out tomorrow. Many of its lyrics are about war. Three songs reference Anzac troops, and two feature aspects of the ill-fated 1915 Gallipoli campaign.

Members of the Pt Chevalier RSA in Auckland this week welcomed the songs - and even invited Harvey to perform for them. Angus McKellar, who served as a navy midshipman in World War II, described The Colour of the Earth - about a man remembering his fallen Anzac comrades - as a "good catchy tune".

"If they do tour we would love to see them here."

The 86-year-old said remembering wars "keeps people honoured. People should remember their history and where they come from. Lest we forget. And that's what it's all about - we don't forget them."

Harvey has been reluctant to talk about the songs during publicity for the album, but told Britain's Sunday Times: "I thought of Gallipoli because of the sheer scale of the disaster.

It was a catastrophe and so badly handled. It seemed to resonate with what's happening now."

Listening to the album was emotional for Vietnam veteran Bill Ashdown, who served in two Anzac battalions. The 64-year-old said anyone who had been in active service could relate to The Colour Of The Earth, and added: "It's a little bit of an honour that other people see these things as something sacred." Ashdown said the album was a "form of poetry".

"Clearly it's done with respect and it's a beautiful art form which can explain these things much better than I can."

Soldiers who had been in active service would connect to such material in a way no civilian could, he said.

"Any way that we can get the message across of the horror and futility of war is important."

Jane Yee, promotions manager for Harvey's record company, Universal, said she was thrilled the veterans enjoyed the songs.

"We will definitely pass that feedback on and make sure she gets that message."

By Kieran Nash

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10705883

Polly Jean Harvey has to be, and if not should be, one of the most respected artists that England has ever produced.

Despite her mainstream and commercial success, including the 2001 Mercury Music Prize, seven Brit Award Nominations, five Grammy Award Nominations and two futher Mercury prize nominations, she has held her ‘cult status’, never ploughing the same musical furrow, always the risk taker.

Her last studio outing ‘White Chalk’ in 2007, a fragile piano led record, was very personal and very emotive. On ‘Let England Shake’ we find Harvey no less emotive but sounding bolder, as she tackles the social issues of fair old England.

On announcing the new album she closely followed up with a live performance on the Andrew Marr Show, playing an auto-harp in full feather headdress. She told Marr that, “my biggest fear was to replicate something I had done before.” Let England Shake proves that after eight studio albums there is still no danger of that being the case.

On the title track opener, “The West’s asleep, let England shake /Weighted down with silent dead,’ she muses, while an insistent chime of a xylophone joins the auto-harp to great effect. The scene is set for what is to be a volume of songs full of both powerful subject matter and imagery.

Recorded in a 19th century church in Dorset, on a clifftop overlooking the sea, PJ has again enlisted the help of long time and trusted collaborators, Flood, John Parish and Mick Harvey. Beyond the music however it is the vividly strong and unique atmosphere that is created that really comes to the fore. The lyrics are, to not put too fine a point on it, centred on war and death, both in England and further afield, in Afghanistan and Gallipoli.

‘The Words That Maketh Murder’ is a thought provoking, juxtaposition of jaunty rhythmic chanting against a background of tragic lyrical content. “Ive seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat/Arms and legs were in the trees/ Ive done things I want to forget, “Harvey professes. She concludes the track with the mantra of “What if I take my problem to the United Nations?”

The soaring vocal tones of ’On Battleship Hill’ shifts the mood once more, almost paganistic in its style, coupled with the enchanting sound of the sustained guitar.

To say this album evokes deep and strong emotion doesn’t even begin to tell half the tale. Once again Harvey as evolved, pushed on, and in essence has channelled the troubled position England finds itself in today.

http://www.beehivecity.com/television/a ... hake32112/

_________________

As befits its title, there is a whole lotta shaking going on on PJ Harvey's eighth album. First to quake is the assumption that Polly Harvey is foremost an artist of the interior, mapping the jagged peaks of desire and the boggy ground of memory. Let England Shake leaves behind the haunted psycho-geography of Harvey's native Dorset, rendered so exquisitely on her last album, White Chalk, and deploys her to an entirely new arena. Over the course of a dozen songs, she examines war, its human cost and her beloved England's role as aggressor and saviour, haven and purgatory.

Even if Harvey disavows a political motive, you would call this a protest record. After all, Harvey did premiere the title track on The Andrew Marr Show in front of Gordon Brown – lest we forget, the bankroller of the Iraq war and the man accused of ill-equipping British forces in Afghanistan. But rather than agitating, Harvey concentrates on bearing witness to armed conflict, from the Gallipoli slaughter of the first world war to the present day. She notes the arms and legs in the trees, the colour of blood on sand and the scent of thyme on the wind all commingling.

Her point is unmistakable – war is both abhorrent and endlessly recurring. But Let England Shake is magnificently ambivalent about her own native soil. Track two, "The Last Living Rose", hymns an England that isn't too far from Peter Doherty's Albion, extolling "the grey damp filthiness of ages/And battered books/And fog rolling down behind the mountains/On the graveyards of dead sea-captains".

On the next track, "The Glorious Land", England no longer shakes to the age-old rumble of the plough, but the thunder of tanks practising manoeuvres. "Oh! America! Oh! En-ger-land!" she sings, exasperated at the entwined aggressive destinies of her musical homeland and her physical one. Harvey's music started out as a kind of spiky, post-Beefheart blues, but this song finds her taking firm root in the English folk tradition.

There is always a risk that an album full of war poetry might feel like a downer. But the payload of grief on Let England Shake is made infinitely more bearable by music that really shakes, too. "On Battleship Hill" is a fluent shimmy you could move to, if you weren't dancing on "caved-in trenches". "The Last Living Rose", too, bobs along kinetically, punctuated by superbly succinct incursions of brass and guitar.

There are ironic, out-of-time bugles here, and lamenting Kurdish singers carrying along the idea of an England that bleeds out into the world. But the album's one questionable move is the skank of "Written on the Forehead" – it interpolates "Blood and Fire", a roots reggae tune by Niney the Observer, in a way that feels a touch tokenistic.

Of course, Harvey offers no solution. When, on "The Words That Maketh Murder", she sings, "Why don't I take my problems to the United Nations?" it's in playful tribute to Eddie Cochran's "Summertime Blues". But running through Let England Shake is, perhaps, the unspoken hope that this land might be reminded of the horrors of war and, perhaps, shake off some of its torpor.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/fe ... land-shake

_________________

Two more good reviews; one in Mail on Sunday (very good, actually!) and one in The Independent on Sunday. Not online yet.

_________________
Wiggins is so superbly unassuming, he looks like he's about to say 'Pop the gold medal in the post, I'm nipping out for some biscuits'

Mark Steel

Let England Shake
Universal / Island
Released: Monday 14 February 2011
Reviewing Polly Jean Harvey is like trying to critic Bob Dylan, the songwriting is so unspeakably detailed and beautiful, even on a bad song, it just renders on the impossible. There is no doubt that this album will be applauded by every music critic out there, pontificating on how relevant the album's themes are, considering England, and the world, seems to be rather messed up right now. Despair not, having identified this, PJ Harvey has all manner of issues to raise, namely the waste of human life that was World War One. Like a war reporter dissecting the last century, this album covers our national identity and Englishness at a time when our government, economy and modern society itself, seem to be falling apart.

The Mercury prize winning, Grammy nominated and all round unbelievably cool English singer/songwriter PJ Harvey's eighth album, Let England Shake, is in essence a concept album, this time looking at the world outside of herself, vastly different from the emotionally charged, piano led, 2007s White Chalk, she seeks to tackle the socio-political issues of her beloved England and the wider world that surrounds it. Recorded in the place of her upbringing, Dorset, Harvey returns to make the album in a cliff top 19th century church overlooking the sea - to great effect, the sound is gothic and ever so unsettling to listen to, but in the best possible way. Harvey's voice is fragile and soaring, sincere and to the point, an almost soft soprano, breaking away from her usual deep, gravelly tones. Having collaborated with longtime "musical soulmate" John Parish, Mick Harvey and producer Flood (who's also produced for U2, Depeche Mode) and on earlier albums , they're all back together for this stripped down, shift of direction album, their presence is felt throughout.

Stories of the bleakness and despair of war abound, ranging from the Anzac trenches to World War One particularly, its heavily laden with violent, bitter images, only with PJ singing about it, things don't actually seeem so awful. Never wanting any album to sound similar to the last, this album references the human disaster that resutls from war in the same way that Wilfred Owen dissects the acts of man in Dulce et Decorum est. It starts off powerfully enough with the title track, Let England Shake, the poetic lyrics "The West's asleep, let England shake /Weighted down with silent dead", are sung musingly, and we know we're in for a tempestuous ride. A dark comical element is lent to the track The Words That Maketh Murder, a rather sarcastic reconstruction of Eddie Cochran: "What if I take my problem to the United Nations?", leaving us wondering if only that were the answer. Creating a rich, layered sound, All and Everyone tells of a Grim Reaper figure, in the killing fields of Bolton's Ridge "Death hung in the smoke and clung/To 400 acres of useless beachfront/A bank of red earth, dripping down death". Having had no direct experience of war, it feels as though Harvey is standing there taking notes, her poetry is truly astonishing.

On Battleship Hill, her high registered voice has a Kate Bush like quality, its theme of the transience of time, an accurate summation for the entire album, where no specific event or conflict is ever concluded on, just a desperate need to understand, not ending in a specific time frame, which is "carried on the wind", "cruel nature" having won again. Things take a softer direction with In the Dark Places, a sad, rythmic story of cursed soldiers "in the fields and in the forest", the passing of time going by so tragically fast. On England, we're assured of Harvey's loyalty to her homeland, accompanied by Middle Eastern chants, as she "lives and dies through England"- you get the feeling she's not exaggerating, and the meaning here is literal.

This is Harvey's best album since 2000s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, which broke her into mainstream consciousness, the album's very real themes on nationalism, not only England's, but the repercussions of imperialism felt around the world from Vietnam to France, is a form of history lesson on the political regime and bloodshed that has gone before, except it's accompanied by guitars and emotional vocals. Harvey has effectively created her own genre of folk music, this album sonehow manages to incorporate a variety of layered sounds, even punk, with the dirty sounding guitar on Bitter Branches. Witchy and tormenting, Let England Shake is the soundrtrack to war and its everlasting, far reaching effects on this earth.

The incomparable John Peel once described PJ Harvey as "...crushed by the weight of her own songs and arrangements...", which is absolutely felt on this album, this is Harvey's lament and love letter to her country, and long may she reign over it.

9/10

http://soundblab.com/content/content/view/id/3346

_________________

Independent on Sunday

Reviewed by Simon Price

Sunday, 13 February 2011

The word "Gallipoli" is, of course, one that still has the power to make Antipodeans flinch, even if to most Britons it vaguely summons an acclaimed film from the 1980s, if at all.

The eight-month escapade in 1915 resulted in the deaths of 11,000 men from the lands Down Under, a spectacularly profligate waste of human life even by The Great War's standards.

After dealing with the subject of private grief on 2007's acclaimed White Chalk, PJ Harvey has used the mass murder of Gallipoli to turn her focus from micro to macro – arguably, for the first time in her career – on Let England Shake, her eighth studio album. Recorded in a 19th-century church on a clifftop in Dorset, whose sweeping sea views must have chimed poignantly with the blood-soaked Balkan beaches which inspired the album, it also features long-time collaborator John Parish, drummer Jean-Marc Butty, and former Bad Seed Mick Harvey (no relation) who, as an Australian, would presumably feel the sentiments particularly keenly.

The quartet explore an often-bewitching vein of traditionally English folk-pop ("The Colour of the Earth" features what sound like Morris- dancers' bells), often reminiscent of late-1960s forebears such as Fairport Convention, and it's given a minimal, hands-off production by Flood.

It's an album about what war does to the aggressor, as much as what it does to the vanquished victim: it depicts a homeland "weighted down with silent dead" whose "fruit is orphaned children" at least as often as the actual battlefields beside the Dardanelles and the "unburied ghosts" of "soldiers [who] fell like lumps of meat". There are occasional sonic reminders of the subject matter, such as cinematic sound effects: the eerie muezzin wail on "England" drops you straight into Turkey itself, and a horn plays a military reveille on "The Glorious Land" (it's just as well the context has been flagged up in advance or else, given Harvey's enthusiasm for bloodsports, one might mistake it for a fox-hunting tally-ho).

There are occasional anachronisms: "The Words That Maketh Murder" paraphrases Eddie Cochran by asking "What if I take my problem to the United Nations?" even though that organisation wouldn't be founded until 1945 (and even its precursor, the League of Nations, was still four years away at the time of Gallipoli), and there's a reference to Vera Lynn's Second World War anthem "White Cliffs of Dover" on "Hanging in the Wire".

But this isn't merely a historical period piece, and without labouring the album's resonances with present-day conflicts, that's exactly PJ's point. England never learns.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-enter ... 13667.html

_________________
Wiggins is so superbly unassuming, he looks like he's about to say 'Pop the gold medal in the post, I'm nipping out for some biscuits'

Mark Steel

When a new PJ Harvey record is announced, the first thing that comes to mind is the question of what will be her new guise. Like a renowned and poised method actor, Harvey playfully inhabits her distinguishing personas and lives them to the hilt. She also makes these performances memorable: from To Bring You My Love’s enrapturing teases to White Chalk’s oppressed cries, Harvey manipulates our senses and digs deep into our voyeuristic desires. She continually outguesses her public, as much as she challenges herself, taking command by learning any instrument she believes is vital.

Let England Shake may be Harvey’s less vainglorious manifestation, but it is also her most intoxicating. Rather than exposing a personal voice, she exercises her political inquietudes with studied intellectualism. Sightless accusations could be made about Harvey giving a condescending eye with macro-political pamphlets. In turn, Harvey speaks in the point of view of an Englishwoman who is distressed with the vague tactical policies that have defined her native land. Harvey hardly opines of her homeland. Instead, she holds the same posture any respectable middle-class English person would have were they to wrinkle the flag of St. George. In England, she indubitably bawls in vocal acrobacies: To you England, I cling/Undaunted, never failing love for you, contorting a duality every disillusioned citizen has with the place they came from.

In Let England Shake, Harvey adjusts her helmet and belts her solder’s rifle to her hip – instead of stories from the sea, she reflects upon the consequences of being a military man in the trenches. The title track opens with the dominance of sanguine persuasion – she persuasively echoes the name Bobby like a recruit fairie, stating: pack up your troubles and let’s head out/to the fountain of death. A good-humored arrangement of the Four Lads’ Istanbul (Not Constantinople) plays in the background, contrasting beautiful imagery with the imminence of war: and the birds are silent/and the insects are courting/and by the shores/heavy stones falling. She also ends the bombardment without remorse - in The Colour of the Shape, an obituary about dear Louis (Louis ran forward from the line) is sung with great English pride, having him in his thoughts without overlooking what became of him (He’s still up on that hill/20 years on that hill/nothing more than a pile of bones). The lyrical sheet constantly recurs its themes like a limitless divergent shift between the idyllic and chaotic.

What’s most peculiar is how Harvey focuses on a long omitted stain in English history – the Gallipoli campaign of 1915. The impact might’ve not been as heavily reported, but Harvey finds great significance in the 30,000 or so who risked their lives. All and Everyone starts calming enough with the faint strum of an autoharp and comforting bongo hits until breaking into a uproar of guitars. Like the fickleness of being on dangerous ground, a series of high and lows level as her voice incrementally rises with the words death was everywhere, until it goes back to a somber scenario of doom and gloom; a droning trumpet mourns another casualty. There are lush, beautiful moments as well – Hanging in the Wire is one of Harvey’s most accomplished moments on record. Composed of a constant percussion riff and a finely tuned piano, she vigilantly whispers about listening to a far off symphony atop the white cliffs of Dover. She pays respects to the British allies who fought in foreign land, complying with the inexorability of warfare as a widespread malady.

Much of the lyricism in Let England Shake appears to be inspired by Laurence Binyon’s Ode to Remembrance, a series of stanzas found in his poem For the Fallen, that symbolically connects both the British Expeditionary Force and the ANZAC Army Corps. Its message now holds bearing to all casualties of war. Maybe Harvey may have stretched out this concept a tad bit, but her brutally honest pictures of battle strike a powerful chord. Moments of positivism are seen on occasion, but the message in hand is altogether acerbic; in other words, this is not a cheerful piece of work. And all the better for it: Harvey sounds spellbound, portraying the subject matter in hand with a fervid spirit. She’s not sermonizing on the issue, but gently urging for something to be done.

13 February, 2011 - 14:25 — Juan Edgardo Rodriguez

http://www.noripcord.com/reviews/music/ ... land-shake

_________________
pack up your troubles, let's head out to the fountain of death and splash about

PJ HARVEY’S BITTERSWEET NATIONALISM
BY FERNANDO SCOCZYNSKI FILHO
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2011


History has proven that PJ Harvey refuses to repeat herself, resulting in an outstandingly wide-ranging and varied career. After 2007’s White Chalk’s piano-driven minimalism confused a large part of her audience, four years later, Ms. Harvey’s eighth LP, Let England Shake, leaves us in awe once more.

The title track opener makes it immediately clear that the moderate instrumentation from White Chalk was a feature exclusive to that album. Her signature eerie vocals still prevail, only this time they’re accompanied by much fuller arrangements. The autoharp, an instrument that Harvey has used extensively on her solo live set, appears on most of Let England Shake, and has an unusually rich sound that’s not quite like a guitar, but in this case acts as a greatly appropriate replacement of one.
In addition, there’s the common presence of the piano, and the occasional appearance of a saxophone and a trombone. It can be an odd pastiche of noises at times, but one that clearly had a lot of thought put into, and doesn’t feel thrown together. An example of this appears on Written On The Forehead, which samples Niney the Observer’s Blood and Fire, a reggae song with a repeated refrain (“Let it burn”) that somehow manages to fit just right.

With a surprisingly pop-oriented rhythm section, the overall tone of the album could nearly be mistaken for a cheery one. That’s not to say anyone should expect the radio-friendly melodies of Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, as the ones within Let England Shake are much more eccentric and eclectic, but there’s a comparison to be drawn in the way that both albums flow easily. A few moments flirt with a much greater weight, such as on Bitter Branches, where the tension builds up as if the band is about to branch out into a full-on rock song, but stays within boundaries of the atmosphere of the album.
For the first time in Polly Jean’s career, she departs from standard personal lyricism, instead focusing a narrative design around the country of her birth. It’s both about the history of England and the narrator’s conflicted relation to its rotting core, a fit of bittersweet nationalism. On The Last Living Rose she sings wistfully about “the Thames River, glistening like gold / Hastily sold for nothing,” and on England she sums things up nicely: “The country that I love / England, you leave a taste / A bitter one.”
Of course, the English motive is present throughout the entire album, but its comprehension isn’t necessary to fully enjoy the songs, nor will it be detrimental in case the lyrics are ignored. Even if the listener couldn’t care less about what historical facts influenced the brilliantly catchy The Words That Maketh Murder, when PJ sings ”I have seen and done things I want to forget / Soldiers fell like lumps of meat / Blown and shot-out beyond belief,” it only makes the experience even better.
Digging deeper into the message of each song reveals a more profound meaning to the record. Centerpiece track All And Everyone, clocking in at almost six minutes, delivers such contemplatives as “Death was in the staring sun / Fixing its eyes on everyone“. The lyric is epic in its own right, but it also happens to narrate the bloody battle of Gallipoli in the early 20th century, where nearly half a million people died.
Let England Shake lies somewhere on the middle of the accessibility road for PJ’s body of work. Her earlier material was immediately easier to pick up, but she’s also done far more unapproachable records (especially considering the ones she co-wrote with John Parish). The first listen is certainly a weird one, but also one that immediately shows the remarkably easy flow of the album. It doesn’t demand great attention, but a superficial analysis won’t reveal just how dense these cuts are, as more layers in the sound are revealed with repeated listens.
Even if you strip the album of its concept and significance, the music stands tall on its own. PJ Harvey’s creative spark on Let England Shake is the brightest it’s been in many years, producing a set of songs that courageously defy her previous experimentations with rock, while simultaneously sounding better every time she tries something new. It’s easy to start losing faith in any artist upon releasing his/her 8th LP, but Ms. Harvey has once again laid waste to our pre-conceived notions.

http://www.antiquiet.com/reviews/2011/0 ... ke-review/

_________________
pack up your troubles, let's head out to the fountain of death and splash about

From the soundlab review posted by Polly_Jean_Cave above:

"On England, we're assured of Harvey's loyalty to her homeland, accompanied by Middle Eastern chants, as she "lives and dies through England"- you get the feeling she's not exaggerating, and the meaning here is literal."

England is incredibly moving. Have the lyrics in front of you as you listen. Probably my favorite track.

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JelqPcoaAB8"

Metacritic currently has 6 reviews posted with a metascore of 99. Not bad.

_________________
pack up your troubles, let's head out to the fountain of death and splash about

http://news.scotsman.com/features/Album ... 6717486.jp
Restless chanteuse PJ Harvey reinvents both sound and subject once more with a superlative suite of songs addressing war and imperialism
PJ Harvey: Let England Shake
*****
By Fiona Shepherd

POLLY Jean Harvey has keenly felt the songwriter's fear of repeating herself, constantly shifting her artistic goalposts from album to album, and returning every few yea
ADVERTISEMENTrs with a fresh, cohesive work, each litter of songs birthed from a specific environment – such as the influence of New York on her Mercury Music Prize-winning Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea – or a challenge she has set herself.

Her previous album, White Chalk, was written on piano, an instrument she had only just learned to play, and sung in an unfamiliar falsetto which took her into intoxicating new territory. She arguably moves even further into her discomfort zone on her eighth album, Let England Shake.

Until now, Harvey has written almost exclusively about the interior world – the sexual reversals of Dry, the southern gothic mantras of To Bring You My Love, the ghostly presence of White Chalk, even the exhilarated lover of Stories From The City… was caught up in her own romantic rapture. It is only now, 20 years into a consistently fascinating career, that she has felt ready to engage with the wider world.

But when Polly is ready, she attacks her subject like no one else. Let England Shake is a superlative suite of songs about war and imperialism, in which she assumes the role of war poet/ songwriter.
In meticulous preparation, she read history books and listened to folk and protest songs from around the world. She took 18 months to write the lyrics, all completed before penning a note of music. And when she was ready, she chose to make her comeback not in the safe haven of Later with Jools Holland, but on The Andrew Marr Show, in front of Gordon Brown, who was still Prime Minister at the time.

But Harvey is not throwing eggs at the government. Her songs are intended to be lyrical, not preachy and, as such, have a devastating power. She makes specific reference on a handful of tracks to the Gallipoli campaign from the First World War but feels that other songs might be set in Bosnia or some historical Russian conflict, her point being that she could be writing about any war, such is the deadly cycle of conflict.

Having made that decision, she does not flinch in her depiction of the scene, whether drawing on survivor accounts from the Great War on the haunted folk of Hanging On The Wire, painting a visceral yet poetic description of the battlefield ("death's anchorage") on All And Everyone, looking with bitter retrospection On Battleship Hill where the "scent of thyme … stings your face into remembering cruel nature has won again" or having Mick Harvey, an Australian, sing the part of an ANZAC veteran remembering a fallen friend on The Colour of the Earth.

She says she felt called to make an album with many voices, inhabiting different vocal registers as the songs require. For the most part she uses the upper end of her range, sounding eerie, but less ethereal and fragile than she did on the sublime White Chalk, though that marvellous falsetto reappears on the baleful On Battleship Hill.

Let England Shake is also a real departure musically, making use of the toytown multi-stringed strum of autoharp, mournful Mellotron, skiffly rhythms and disarmingly hummable melodies to create an unsettling, yet engrossing, sound palette.

The title track combines a bewitching melody, sprung rhythm and Harvey's creepily playful vocal with its dread message that "the West's asleep, let England shake, weighted down with silent dead". Harvey says she has no wish to lecture but she doesn't pull her punches either on The Glorious Land, a disquieting chime which asks bluntly "what is the glorious fruit of our land? its fruit is orphan children" like the darkest nursery rhyme. Dreaming of the home front, The Last Living Rose is a truly bittersweet homesick lament ("let me walk through the stinking alleys to the music of drunken beatings") which Laura Marling might just kill for.

Written On The Forehead is an uncomfortable marriage of Harvey's elegy for Iraq and an awkwardly integrated sample of reggae track Blood And Fire which sounds like two songs playing simultaneously in Bobby Gillespie's head. But everything comes together on current single The Words That Maketh Murder which succeeds in combining the upbeat soundtrack of kick drum, handclaps, horns and a jaunty Eddie Cochran-referencing chorus of "what if I take my problems to the United Nations" with blunt references to severed limbs in trees.

That it recalls both the shocking imagery of Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit and the musical audacity of Kate Bush is only a testament to the creative company which PJ Harvey keeps.