Let England Shake
For her 11th album, PJ Harvey steps away from the strident agit-folk that made her name in the ‘90s, writing instead a subtle and hauntingly beautiful record that is simultaneously a meditation on the brutality and futility of the First World War and a nostalgic paean to her home country. As is her custom, guitars take center stage, all eerie and drenched in chilling reverb (“In the Dark Places”), while Harvey’s vocals are uncharacteristically understated and soft, reaching tremulously to the top of her register on “Hanging in the Wire.”
The always-unpredictable singer-songwriter returns with a haunting and beautiful meditation on war that ranks with her finest records.
Like politics itself, political albums are too often preachy and shrill. In some ways, PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake—an avowedly anti-war record—falls prey to the same pitfalls. But Shake’s transcendence lies in Harvey’s acceptance of the limitations of the political album, and the way she recombines protest-music…
Polly Jean Harvey has stoically and elegantly documented the days when the dancing has stopped and the bloom has fallen off the last living rose, and in the process has crafted an album that difficultly defines our troubled times while also offering hope…
Both an excoriation and celebration of her home country, Let England Shake is as straightforward a concept as PJ Harvey has ever addressed on record.
Harvey’s big humanist statement is scatter shot with non specific socio-political proclamations constructed of character narratives which focus on external rather than internal conflicts.
Last year Polly Jean Harvey turned 41, prepared her eighth studio, Let England Shake -- and marked the tenth anniversary of 2000’s Stories from the City,...
<p>PJ Harvey's new album finds her at something of a creative peak, says <strong>Alexis Petridis</strong>. Plus: it's got tunes</p>