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PJ Harvey is an anomaly. She is as unique an artist as you will have the pleasure to come across in the music industry today. With this comes both a positive and negative consequence. The positive is that Let England Shake, now Harvey’s eighth solo contribution is as original as anything she has produced before. An uncommon, but indeed admirable, belief of Harvey is that she is unwilling to simply clone the previous album formulas. Whether her previous material was successful or not, Harvey aims to constantly challenge herself with a different style of music and even completely altered personas.
No one can doubt the artistic integrity of these decisions, however commercially this unique outlook has not always paid dividends. Let England Shake is PJ Harvey’s first top ten since 1993, ‘Rid Of Me’. Clearly not one to be prey to popular trends, Harvey has chosen to focus this latest album on the appreciation of our country and the violent past that has moulded it.
Interestingly, the majority of this record is recorded on a little instrument called an autoharp, which Harvey described ‘a simple guitar’ that she played in primary school, with the saxophone and the equally obscure zither also prominent. It is important to say that PJ Harvey has openly admitted that she doesn’t see herself a real musician, her focus always being on the lyrics which have a refreshingly deep symbolic nature and a truly poetic quality. However, this is not to say that Let England Shake is musically weak just that the lyrics take precedent over the fairly simplistic, folk melodies.
‘The Words That Maketh Murder’ has a delightfully playful feel to it yet is as dark as the album gets depicting the horrors of the First World War and the endless deaths “soldiers falling like lumps of meat”. This song also includes a strangely mischievous, almost Oompa Loompa style, male refrain which combines with Harvey’s own voice to finish on the borrowed line “What if I take my problem to the United Nations?” from the timeless Summertime Blues.
‘Written On The Forehead’ showcases Harvey’s ability to sound almost inhuman with a her beautifully lyrical voice, which is teamed flawlessly with a simple floating melody which reeks of loveliness. ‘England’ is an eerily beautiful acoustic homage to the “Country that I love”. Haunting yet familiar and relatable, a superb ballad to a country as unique and eccentric as PJ Harvey herself.
With an absence of many female artists, outside of the R&B genre, PJ Harvey’s musical pedigree is a welcome surprise. Let England Shake is a fantastic composition with a delectably deeper level of meaning to every lyric and uncomplicated melodies that allow Harvey’s lyrical talent to shine. It is a real pleasure to see a truly elementary artist who seems to produce music purely for the artistic pleasure she gets from it. I hope that like myself listening to this accomplished and original record will spur you on to hunt out and wolf down hungrily the previous work of this ever fascinating artist. In an industry where originality can seem sparse, PJ Harvey is an infrequent but definite gust in a alternative direction. A fine, fine album here, not incredible but interesting and very good.
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