aaamusic | On 14, Feb 2011

With seven albums, award nominations and an impressive gathering of groupies under her belt PJ Harvey must, like many an artist, start to wonder how to go about shaking out another album. This does not seem to be the case with her current muse per se being that of war; an issue of some great import and of specific relevance in our current time.

With her penultimate album ‘Whitelist’, its back-bone was that of her own personal situation, grief being the contender for issue number one. ‘Let England Shake’ however, over the course of a dozen songs, sets about to analyse the recurrence and seemingly necessary nature of war.  It’s not a pretty site, with images of suffering and pointless unrewarded, anonymous death being so entrenched in the album that it is sickening.

That is not to say that the music is not unremarkable with PJ Harveys’ vocals ranging from a gothic Mike Skinner-esque monologue to a whispering, ephemeral,  haunting choral tone  in ‘On battleship hill’, as if she were the spirit of one of those killed returning to the scene of the slaughter.  There is even plenty of Old English Folk and traditional music apparent especially in ‘The glorious land’.  This use of English traditional music is symbolic of both PJ Harvey’s patriotism and also the link England has with the recurrence of pointless battle.

Lyrics in the aforementioned song such as “what is the glorious fruit of our land/ the fruit is orphan children”, and the line “I’ve seen soldiers fall like lumps of flesh” in the following track are really symbolic of the album’s perspective on war.  It is without reason as both sides ultimately lose leaving wives and children to pick up the pieces and to mourn their loss.

Just as an aside, it is interesting to note that the title-track itself seems to bounce along merrily despite the album’s desperately disheartening message.

Anyway, behind an album that deals with war in such a brutally honest, descriptive and, most importantly, biased way it is hard not to look at the politics behind its execution.  PJ Harvey simply adores her England, which is no more apparent than in ‘England’, and not since Vietnam has war been the basis for such material.  Many people think of the situation in Afghanistan as that of Vietnam and it is no coincidence that PJ Harvey premiered the title track to the LP on Andrew Marr’s show whilst George Brown was present, who signed away the money for the invasion of Iraq.

Okay, it is a political album in some respects, however the point that she is making is unmistakable, and that is that war is horrendous and will never exist whilst there is peace.  The unfortunate perfection of this world requires such solutions.

In achieving her goal of undermining the horrors of war, she has been extremely successful and it is a beautiful and varied album (musically) to boot.

Verdict – Harrowing, beautiful and more true or brave than most albums released by such high profile artists in recent years.

Author: Guy Waddington