- Purchase a product from the Music Store sold by Amazon.co.uk and receive £1 to use on an album download in our MP3 Store. Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
Amazon.co.uk allows you to pay for your items in your local currency. Restrictions apply. Learn More. |
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
Listen to Samples and Buy MP3s
Songs from this album are available to purchase as MP3s. Click on "Buy MP3" or
view the MP3 Album.
|
Product Description
Review
The title of Polly Harvey’s seventh album, 2007’s White Chalk, seemed to address England’s psycho-geography by way of Dover’s iconic coastline. Perhaps that’s projection. But her eighth most definitely does. It’s a concept album, folks. Songtitles include The Last Living Rose, England and The Glorious Land, with a distinct whiff of landscape and legend. A fragile Hanging in the Wire even namechecks "the white hills of Dover". Pete Doherty doesn’t have a copyright on singing about Albion, you know.
Going by her latest photos, Harvey’s position as the alternative Lady Gaga, confounding expectations and changing hair styles at each turn, remains undiminished. This time, the black gown and headpiece screams Hel, the Norse God of the dead. And when you read the lyric sheet, death fair stares you in the face. Its first words are "Let England shake / Weighed down with silent dead"; The Last Living Rose sings of "the grey damp filthiness of ages," and it turns out "the glorious fruit of our land" is "orphaned children". Add various references – Battleship Hill, Bolton Ridge, the Anzac trench – to the disastrous Allied invasion of Galipoli, Turkey in World War One and we appear to have a psycho-geographic lament around the perils of colonialism and the ravages of war that resonate right up to the present.
As a backdrop to this brutal battlefield, Harvey has shifted from White Chalk’s gaunt piano ballads to a broader sound that is no less feverish and close to the bone. Imagine a minimalist take on her debut album Dry’s folk-blues tilt, all urgent and wiry rhythm. It’s recorded mostly live with multi-instrumental support from the long-serving John Parrish and (former Bad Seed) Mick Harvey. But there are subtle additions; the signature horse’n’ hounds bugle leading the hunt is woven into a shifty The Glorious Land, the Bulgarian women’s choral wail (shouldn’t that be Turkish?) on the otherwise skeletal England. There is a playful reference to Eddie Cochran’s Summertime Blues via "what if I take my troubles to the United Nations?" into a skiffle-shaped The Words That Maketh Murder; but this is categorically a sad, despairing album. It ends with The Colour of the Earth, where a host of male voices (including the band) and Polly recall a soldier cut down in action and now "nothing but a pile of bones".
Ah, Earth, so much to answer for. But thankfully we have PJ with another fearsomely creative, emotional record to lead the resistance. God bless unique, unfathomable, great Queen Polly.
--Martin Aston
Find more music at the BBC This link will take you off Amazon in a new window
CD Description
PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake was recorded in a 19th Century church in Dorset, on a clifftop overlooking the sea. It was created with a cast of musicians including such long-standing allies as Flood, John Parish, and Mick Harvey. It is the eighth PJ Harvey album, following 2007’s acclaimed White Chalk, and the Harvey/Parish collaboration A Woman A Man Walked By. Let England Shake evokes the troubled spirit of 2010, but it also casts its mind back to times and places from our long collective memory. In keeping with such imaginative intentions, its music has a rare breadth and emotional power. Nearly two decades after she made her first records, it proves that not just that its author refuses to stand still, but that her creative confidence may well be at an all-time high. It is safe to say that you will not have heard anything like it before.
10 years after her album Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea scooped the Mercury Music Prize, PJ Harvey became the first artist to win it twice when Let England Shake was also awarded the prestigious prize in 2011.
10 years after her album Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea scooped the Mercury Music Prize, PJ Harvey became the first artist to win it twice when Let England Shake was also awarded the prestigious prize in 2011.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
National Treasure,
By
This review is from: Let England Shake (Audio CD)
This is meant to be PJ Harvey's war album and the lyrics, music and feel give you no doubt that Polly Jean Harvey has put a lot of effort into this. There are 12 tracks of short doses of lyrical and musical feats centring around that theme and and the theme of England. Guitars and a very strong percussion accompany the different forms of Harveys voice to give a driven feel throughout. Sometimes she sounds almost operatic and others just angry - sometimes in the same song. The overall effect of this is quite dizzying and it takes a while to appreciate the scope of this album. Tracks like Bitter Branches and Last Living Rose are immediate whilst other take their time to appeal. But they get there. Even when the bugle of The Glorious Land comes in you are a little taken aback at first - but it makes sense with the lyrics. And the lyrics need mentioning. They are quite brilliant - descriptive and concise they are the focus of this album. This album will be up there at the end of the year - already nominated for a Mercury. And it deserves to be.In the 80's every new female artist was compared to Kate Bush. Now the likes of Anna Calvi et al are compared to PJ Harvey. That should be a measure of her current standing. This offering only cements her place. 'I live and die through England' PJ Harvey declares at the start of her acoustic ode to her mother country. Listening to this you know she believes that in her soul. Heartfelt and meaningful this is a very accomplished album. It also is that rare thing - an album put together by someone who believes every word she sings.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant album about the Great War that never ends...,
By R. Hutchinson "autonomeus" (a world ruled by fossil fuels and fossil minds) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Let England Shake (Audio CD)
This is a brilliant new album from PJ Harvey! The twelve songs are all about war in general and The Great War in particular, the war that devastated Europe and was supposed to be The War To End All Wars. We know how that turned out. Several of the songs are about the bloody 1915 battle of Gallipoli, based on the book "Voices of Gallipoli." The songs are sparse but rich, with powerful lyrics describing the horrors of war from the perspective of the young soldiers who are slaughtered in them. LET ENGLAND SHAKE was recorded in a beautiful old church in Dorset, pictured in the booklet and inlay. The sound is resonant, and features Harvey, Jon Parish, Mick Harvey, and Jean-Marc Butty. Harvey learned to play the autoharp for these songs, and it is heard on four tracks.Lest one think that the album is utterly bleak, many of these dark songs are quite catchy and toe-tapping. Some are more compelling than others, but the combined effect, the album as a whole, is greater than any individual part. The tone is relatively light and restrained given the subject matter. Harvey sings in her upper register. To me it sounds like it could be a recent Mekons album, particularly Journey to the End of the Night from 2000 (see my review). Given that the Mekons are among my favorite artists, I mean that as the highest praise. Though Harvey clearly situates LET ENGLAND SHAKE in the context of British history and culture, and it will certainly speak to a British listener in a way that others might not totally understand, the theme is obviously universal, and unfortunately timeless as well. One song ("Written On the Forehead") could easily be about the contemporary invasion and occupation of Iraq, though it could be about the Ottoman lands of 1915. Others have analyzed the album's place in the trajectory of PJ Harvey's music. I want to stress that in its own right this is a powerful piece of art that should be heard whether you are a fan of her previous music or not. Definitely one of the best of the year early on.
75 of 85 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Great Album For This Or Any Year,
By
This review is from: Let England Shake (Audio CD)
I've had my doubts about some of PJ Harvey's work since Is This Desire, although I have never doubted she had lost any of her immense talent. As if to confirm this Let England Shake is quite simply a great album by any standards. Most of the attention from reviewers has so far centred on the lyrical content and indeed this is most impressive. The twin themes of her ambivalent relationship with England and the destructive cost of war run and intertwine throughout the album. Apparently PJ did a great deal of research before writing these songs; in the very best way this is something that does not show, these are not intellectual or preachy songs. Instead we have a highly individual and considered response to important issues. By looking outwards she has written some of the most resonant and moving lyrics of her career.Of course for all that PJ is not a poet and without music to match this would not be a great album. The music is actually quite difficult to describe as it sounds unlike anything she has recorded before and yet entirely like her. Looser than usual, it is more melodious than she has allowed herself to be in the past, and at times with it's strummed autoharp and guitars it could almost be described as folk-rock (at times the feel of this record is also similar to The Velvet's third album as a guide). PJ's voice retains much of the higher range debuted on White Chalk but is richer than on that record. There are no weak tracks here but the standout for me is the central section of All & Everyone, Battleship Hill and England, it is quite simply as beautiful a run of three songs as I can remember. Also immediately impressive are the title track, The Words That Maketh Murder and the apocalyptic Written On The Forehead (appropriately featuring a sample from that most apocalyptic genres reggae - Niney The Observer's Blood And Fire). Overall as I started off saying this is a great album, perhaps the most musically inviting and lyrically deepest of her career. Now a veteran, it may even be the best album of PJ's career. I am loath to use the word masterpiece of any new record, but I think that if you were to ask me in a year that is exactly how I would describe this.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews |
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
