Album: Let England Shake
Artist: PJ Harvey
Born: Bridport, Dorset
Released: November 2011
Genre: Electric Folk
A little potted history of PJ Harvey's musical career might help to fill the aching 20-year gap this blog has left between her first record, Dry, and her eighth LP, Let England Shake. Following Dry's release in 1992, Harvey teamed up with Steve Albini for Rid Of Me (1993), one of her most punk-inspired releases, containing the raucous Man-Size and an imaginative cover of Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. Third LP, To Bring You My Love (1995), marked the start of her long collaboration with producer Flood and the breakthrough single Down By The Water, as well a heavier goth influence, which culminated in a collaboration with Nick Cave for his Murder Ballads (1996) LP -- Henry Lee. Harvey's the sort of artist always trying to break new ground, so she quickly ditched the goth image for her fourth LP, Is This Desire? (1998), perhaps the most experimental of all her records. Then came the hugely successful Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000), which won her the Mercury Prize in 2001 and featured some of Harvey's best songwriting, including a collaboration with Thom Yorke on The Mess We're In. Her sixth LP, Uh Huh Her (2004), took another left turn, moving away from the darker themes that normally characterise her songs, to focus on recreating the primal energy and rock swagger of Janis Joplin. To stretch herself musically, Harvey learned to play piano and started to sing in a higher register for her seventh album, White Chalk (2007). This change in her vocal style, and a return to darker themes, was maintained on Let England Shake, largely an artistic decision by Harvey to adopt the voice of a "narrator" suited to the subject material. The big difference with the more introspective White Chalk is that this album is very focused on the wider world, especially war in Europe and the Middle East.
Written On The Forehead is one of the strangest, most brilliant songs on the record. The lyrics paint a picture of impending doom, with war coming to an unspecified Middle Eastern city and panic among the local population ("Some dove in the river and tried to swim away / through tons of sewage, fate written on their foreheads"). Yet the music is surprisingly upbeat, the lilting melody of reggae sample Blood & Fire (from Niney the Observer) at odds with the ominous words, as well as the joyous chorus of "Let it burn!". This visionary imagery of people in flight is reminiscent of the poetry of T. S. Eliot, while the lyrics of the title track are full of Pinter-style social commentary ("England's dancing days are done"). Harvey performed Let England Shake on the Andrew Marr show in April 2011, in front of Gordon Brown, an odd performance that shows her playing the autoharp over a sample of the Four Lads' 1953 song Istanbul (Not Constantinople). The autoharp plays a key role throughout the album and, like another brilliant 2011 record (Ravedeath, 1972), much of the music was recorded in a church. This is fitting given the album's muted and spiritual tone, with Harvey often meditating on the ravages of war, especially key events like Gallipoli in WW1. The imagery in The Words That Maketh Murder is especially stark, and Harvey closes the song with the refrain, "What if I take my problem to the United Nations?", in the style of Eddie Cochrane's Summertime Blues. Other echoes from pop music's past include the sound of the bugle on This Glorious Land, reminiscent of the song Trumpeter Landfrey on Pearls Before Swine's Balaklava. Though the music is seeped in the radical electric folk of the British Isles, especially Bitter Branches, England and The Colour Of The Earth, the record's themes are universal. A wake-up call to a western world that's "asleep".
A little potted history of PJ Harvey's musical career might help to fill the aching 20-year gap this blog has left between her first record, Dry, and her eighth LP, Let England Shake. Following Dry's release in 1992, Harvey teamed up with Steve Albini for Rid Of Me (1993), one of her most punk-inspired releases, containing the raucous Man-Size and an imaginative cover of Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. Third LP, To Bring You My Love (1995), marked the start of her long collaboration with producer Flood and the breakthrough single Down By The Water, as well a heavier goth influence, which culminated in a collaboration with Nick Cave for his Murder Ballads (1996) LP -- Henry Lee. Harvey's the sort of artist always trying to break new ground, so she quickly ditched the goth image for her fourth LP, Is This Desire? (1998), perhaps the most experimental of all her records. Then came the hugely successful Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000), which won her the Mercury Prize in 2001 and featured some of Harvey's best songwriting, including a collaboration with Thom Yorke on The Mess We're In. Her sixth LP, Uh Huh Her (2004), took another left turn, moving away from the darker themes that normally characterise her songs, to focus on recreating the primal energy and rock swagger of Janis Joplin. To stretch herself musically, Harvey learned to play piano and started to sing in a higher register for her seventh album, White Chalk (2007). This change in her vocal style, and a return to darker themes, was maintained on Let England Shake, largely an artistic decision by Harvey to adopt the voice of a "narrator" suited to the subject material. The big difference with the more introspective White Chalk is that this album is very focused on the wider world, especially war in Europe and the Middle East.
Written On The Forehead is one of the strangest, most brilliant songs on the record. The lyrics paint a picture of impending doom, with war coming to an unspecified Middle Eastern city and panic among the local population ("Some dove in the river and tried to swim away / through tons of sewage, fate written on their foreheads"). Yet the music is surprisingly upbeat, the lilting melody of reggae sample Blood & Fire (from Niney the Observer) at odds with the ominous words, as well as the joyous chorus of "Let it burn!". This visionary imagery of people in flight is reminiscent of the poetry of T. S. Eliot, while the lyrics of the title track are full of Pinter-style social commentary ("England's dancing days are done"). Harvey performed Let England Shake on the Andrew Marr show in April 2011, in front of Gordon Brown, an odd performance that shows her playing the autoharp over a sample of the Four Lads' 1953 song Istanbul (Not Constantinople). The autoharp plays a key role throughout the album and, like another brilliant 2011 record (Ravedeath, 1972), much of the music was recorded in a church. This is fitting given the album's muted and spiritual tone, with Harvey often meditating on the ravages of war, especially key events like Gallipoli in WW1. The imagery in The Words That Maketh Murder is especially stark, and Harvey closes the song with the refrain, "What if I take my problem to the United Nations?", in the style of Eddie Cochrane's Summertime Blues. Other echoes from pop music's past include the sound of the bugle on This Glorious Land, reminiscent of the song Trumpeter Landfrey on Pearls Before Swine's Balaklava. Though the music is seeped in the radical electric folk of the British Isles, especially Bitter Branches, England and The Colour Of The Earth, the record's themes are universal. A wake-up call to a western world that's "asleep".
Comments