PJ HARVEY

Let England Shake

[Vagrant]

After years of making love songs sound like declarations of war, PJ Harvey is flipping the script. Let England Shake is a blunt indictment of her country’s past and present militarism, and while the lyrics range from mournful to venomous, the music is steady and restrained. Part of that is due to instrumentation: Harvey wrote these songs on autoharp, an instrument that doesn’t exactly lend itself to hardcore thrashing. But even when she picks up the guitar, as on “The Glorious Land,” she avoids the snarling blues-punk of her early albums. Instead, she and co-producer John Parish opt for a hypnotic jangle—augmented elsewhere by disquieting xylophone and funereal horns. Johnny Rotten once said he couldn’t have written “God Save the Queen,” the song that got him labeled a traitor, unless he loved his country and was saddened by what it had become. On the violin-tinged “England,” the album’s chronological and thematic centerpiece, Harvey makes that same point. –Kenneth Partridge

comment closed

Copyright © 2011 M Music & Musicians Magazine ·