Let England Shake

PJ Harvey | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (February 15, 2011)
• Original Release Date: 2011
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Vagrant Records
• ASIN: B004GHYCKW
• Also Available in: Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,251 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

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.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

67 of 76 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Oh, England My Lionheart, February 19, 2011

By 

David Chris Dalton (Raleigh, NC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Let England Shake (Audio CD)

Kate Bush and Nick Cave had a baby. They named the baby "Let England Shake." This is absolutely brilliant. Last night, I listened to it for the first time with the headphones on. It was so mindblowing, I actually had to take them off and stop for a while. So much subtlety and grace. This album is simply beautiful. This album is simply horrifying.

It seems to me that, beyond being an album about war and an album about England, it is an album that is about death. It is about death and how responsible we humans are for it much of the time. To know that you are mortal, that your time is finite, yet to still construct rationales and to still be beholden to animal lusts that cut that already unfathomably precious time even shorter...for what? Staggering.

I've seen a lot of conservative comments, lacking vision, that feel Ms. Harvey is not the Ms. Harvey of old, that she has lost the fire of the 1990's. Nothing could be further from the truth. Ironic that the ravages of time and the descent into bitterness that are reflected upon in this record are echoed in the negativity of some of the reviews. But I suppose that's to be expected as the war of life drags ever on.

48 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Musically Rich, Emotive, and Dignified. Her Best Album in a Decade., February 15, 2011

By 

Alan Koslowski (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Let England Shake (Audio CD)

During the first decade of her career (1991-2000) Harvey was one of the most deservedly acclaimed artists in all of music. In fact much of her work during that period is among the most varied and challenging (and best) popular music ever released: Whether the potent blues-punk of "Dry" and "Rid of Me", the industrial/gospel/blues-mythology of "To Bring You My Love" (arguable her best work), or the refined, emphatically heartfelt "Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea" (2000), she seemed incapable of a misstep. Her work became both less prolific and less inspired. Apart from a collaboration with band-mate John Parrish, the next decade only saw two releases: "Uh-huh Her" was an uninspired hodgepodge of her previous approaches, while "White Chalk" consisted of decent, but somewhat pedestrian piano-based ballads. "Let England Shake" is her most inspired, consistent album in a decade.

Thematically "Let England Shake" is poignant and mournful like much or her earlier work, but the songwriting is more fully realized, and the music is richer and fuller than an White Chalk. While she doesn't really take any major departures, she finds ways to embellish her sound. Perhaps most interestingly, she sometimes directly uses other artists as a partial substrate: "Written on the Forehead," samples Niney the Observers' "Blood and Fire", while "The Glorious Land" includes a traditional bugled battle hymn of the U.S. Cavalry. On a few other tracks she subtly infuses elements like horns, brass, and maybe even a xylophone (I think). The result is a lush, warm album that deftly combines both modern and traditional musical elements: Perhaps the perfect stage for Harvey's mournful ruminations on the national and personal destruction wrought by war.

Though her emotional and thematic complexity always defies easy description and understanding, "Let England Shake" can be generally interpreted as both a love letter to and a eulogy for her home country of England and the carnage wrought by military conflict. Throughout the record, there are vivid, painful images of death in various forms and stages. Despite her agonizing lyricism, Harvey almost always manages to keep "Let England Shake" resolutely dignified and compelling; rather than wholly succumbing to the carnage and darkness, she uses the grief as a source of inspiration (and vocally, she's still in top form).

While they are very different albums, much as she did with "To Bring You My Love", Harvey has pulled off a rare accomplishment on "Let England Shake": She marries grand, inspired music with poignant, mournful themes in a way that makes both elements more compelling than they would be separately. While she's not as emphatic, bold, and immediate as she was in her peak, with this album she reasserts herself as one of the most sophisticated, poetic, articulate, and uniquely undefinable musical artists. To me, this is her first album that's both unapologetically mature and genuinely inspired.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Classic From Peej, March 24, 2011

By 

G. Locke "Ze Catalist Dot Com" (Fort Wayne, IN) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Let England Shake (Audio CD)

English singer/songwriter PJ Harvey has released a number of great records since her classic debut, often changing her style and - aside from maybe Uh Huh Her - making sure that each record has its own identity. For her eighth proper studio record, the great Let England Shake, Harvey is changing things up more than ever, offering something of a new vocal style, a new focal instrument (the autoharp), some strange ornamentation (saxophones, you name it), and a very heavy and constant focus (war). All that said, this still somehow feels very much like a PJ Harvey record, offering all the bite and howl of her best work while giving the listener plenty to think about.

Long known not only for her howl, but also for her songwriting ability (see White Chalk or To Bring You My Love for proof), Harvey seems maybe more focused here than ever, admitting in the media that she spent quite a bit of time studying the history of conflict and war while writing her new record. And while its easy to listen to these 12 songs and think about things going on in the world today, most of the themes and concepts can be traced back through time, Harvey often referencing Anzac Cove, not Afghanistan. And while I do find the lyrics to be particularly interesting and even rewarding (Harvey supposedly spent over two years simply perfecting the lyrics with not instruments, but pen and paper), what I find most rewarding about this record are Harvey's arrangements and singing, which are as good here as ever.

It's not that I don't care about war or respect someone writing so elegantly about the evil of men (primarily in Europe, though I imagine it's hard for an American to hear the record and not feel like she's talking Bush and Obama), it's just that, well, I like music far more than I like war. War bums me out; music shoots straight to my mental state of well being in a way that nothing else can. The mixture of the two things, when you think about it, is strange; but, when done properly, it can work quite well. And while Harvey is often singing about sad history, you'd only know it if you paid close attention to her words with each spin - something I don't recommend. There's too much beauty in these often strange compositions to overlook. My theory is that, since Harvey, such a skilled album-maker at this point, took so long to pen these tunes, she very likely also had a whole lot of time to think about how she wanted to approach them in the studio. And so she came in with new voice, new sound and focused words, ready to record some of her most realized work ever.

Back when I was working in record stores I'd play Is This Desire? and, more than almost anything, Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea very, very often. Both albums had songs that appealed to me instantly, not unlike Let England Shake tracks such as "The Last Living Rose," "England" and "The Words That Maketh Murder." But, as I stuck with those two records, they revealed themselves to me in new ways, growing as I listened, eventually becoming front-to-back favorites. England is no different, once again proving Harvey as a true blue AOR-styled artist with some serious longevity.

Take an artist, any artist, with loads of great albums. Picture that catalog and all its high points. Now imagine me telling you that that very artist has yet to release their best record. Chances are, you wouldn't believe me. I wouldn't believe me. But here we have PJ Harvey who, after two decades of releasing great - even classic, in some cases - records, has released what could very likely go down as her signature record. It's the music. It's the singing. It's the writing. It's the strange ornamentation. Everything comes together here to form a solid, memorable work that ups the ante for anyone trying to make a serious album made to move and inspire. That the backdrops are also so unique and cool is one hell of a bonus.

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