“Let England Shake”
PJ Harvey

Island
2011
8 / 10

Polly is back.
After the performance on The Andrew Marr Show, Pj Harvey has come back, with another little masterpiece after “To Bring You My Love” (’95) and “A Woman A Man Walked By” (2009).
Full of experimental tricks, from pop melodies to cymbals, strings, bitter honey voice and aggressive mood, our heroine gives us an album where the new ideas are the protagonists of the creation itself, from The Last Living Rose, guitar-and-voice percussioned and filled by horns, to The Glorious Land, where the act of battle is set in a liturgical rhythm, or All And Everyone (with organs and dissonances), England (lovely, melancholic letter to her country, half singing and half wailing), On Battleship Hill (echoing to the damage that brings upon humanity) and The Words That Maketh Murder, a real portrait of personal wars, or the obscure essence of In The Dark Places or The Colour Of The Earth, that’s like an essay about history.
Harvey and Parish, again and again in artistic collaboration, to create an infinitive musical story about earth, flying from Nick Cave to Patti Smith, in a direct experimental rock flood, once provocative, once lovely, once religious and once divine.
So divine.
Never ending the evolution, of course.

TRACKLIST:
“Let England shake”
“The last living rose”
“The glorious land”
“The words that maketh murder”
“All and everyone”
“On Battleship Hill”
“England”
“In the dark places”
“Bitter branches”
“Hanging in the wire”
“Written on the forehead”
“The colour of the Earth”

Web: www.pjharvey.net

by Ilaria Rebecchi

Related Images: