PJ Harvey:Let England Shake

8.9/10 dropps
Vagrant; 2011

Over the last two decades, English singer/songwriter P J Harvey has established her rose-cheeky attitude and licentious creative power to purge her spunk through atonal music. Harvey has emerged carrying the cultish charm of her feminine-rock predecessors such as Joan Jet and Pat Benatar. Through the years, her musical luster has been polished using punk, electronic, folk, blues, and grunge music to further her alluring musicianship. She previously dabbled in two projects, Automatic Diamini and the P J Harvey Trio, before embarking on her solo endeavors. Since then, P J Harvey has continued to fashion herself as a femme fatale troubadour, blazing disastrous trails in her wake.

P J Harvey is definitely no damsel in distress, nor does it seem that she need to be rescued anytime soon given her latest record, Let England Shake [Vagrant/Island Def Jam]. The album commences with the title tack and loosely sets the stage for the rest of the politically hued album with: “The West’s asleep, let England shake.” Harvey voices the fleeting deficiencies of both England and America’s nationalism through her wavering melodies –both musically and vocally. Her subversive lyrics undergo a ripping thrust in “The Glorious Land” where she opines, “What is the glorious fruit of our land/Its fruit is deformed children/What is the glorious fruit of our land?/Our fruit is orphaned children.” Through diverse narratives, Harvey divulges the bitter stagnation of the nation’s people, yet still avails her sweet love for England (though it has withered). The song “England” is a tragic billet-doux. There’s a slight schmaltzy sense in the air surrounding this effort that ratifies her sentimentality of being torn with how a nation, and particularly England, tries to sustain itself using such circus-act methods.

Let England Shake evinces Olympic stamina, as there is hardly a song on the album that isn’t catchy or lacks well-constructed candor. Each song is coated with its own caliber of poignancy marbled with authentic authorship. In “The Words That Maketh Murder” Harvey vivifies gritty war images: “I’ve seen and done things I want to forget/I’ve seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat/Blown and shot out beyond belief/Arms and legs were in the trees” – and the memorable outro – “What if I take my problem to the United Nations.” Through this, Harvey is broadcasting what she perceives to be the bleak marrow within the bones England, and she is not doing it surreptitiously. There are a few sections on the album that seem especially disconcerting, like the intro to “On Battleship Hill” that begins with the strumming of minor chord acoustics which blend into an opera-esque monologue by Harvey. Though, after a few listens, this part no longer seems like an interruption but rather a vignette of unshackled zeal as it leads back into the cadence of the intro. Although she encroaches on very intellectual property, Harvey does it in a non-bombastic manner, through uncanny dexterity. It’s too early to zoom out and observe the impact that Let England Shake might have on English nationalism, but P J Harvey is definitely erupting a tumultuous tremor on the grounds of dishonorable behavior.

-Zach Frimmel