Let England Shake Reviews

[DrDark]

trying to make one thread just for the major reviews..

Q, Feb 2011:
http://pjharvey.lucidwebs.co.uk/home_im ... _Feb11.jpg

Mojo, Feb 2011:
http://pjharvey.lucidwebs.co.uk/home_im ... _Feb11.jpg

Stereogum, Jan 6, 2011:
http://stereogum.com/611942/progress-re ... ss-report/

[DrDark]

Laura Snapes' track by track review for NME is a keeper:
http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog= ... &tb=1&pb=1

[sanvean]

The Quietus February 2011
http://thequietus.com/articles/05520-pj ... land-shake

Drowned In Sound Feb 2011
http://drownedinsound.com/news/4141803- ... ian?ticker

[DrDark]

Quietus track by track review
http://thequietus.com/articles/05568-pj ... ack-review

Full DIS interview
http://drownedinsound.com/in_depth/4141 ... -pj-harvey

[DrDark]

Glide Magazine
http://www.glidemagazine.com/articles/5 ... arvey.html

[Romario11]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-2 ... beech.html
P.J. Harvey’s “Let England Shake” is a brave piece of experimental rock. She takes risks. When it works, which is most of the time, the record is brilliant.

This is a state-of-the-nation sketch that will strike more of a chord on Harvey’s side of the pond, with titles such as “The Glorious Land,” “England” and “The Last Living Rose.” Still, the lyrics reveal a love-hate relationship to home, wherever that may be: “Take me back to beautiful England/ and the gray, damp filthiness of ages.”

Rating: ****.

[sanvean]

http://www.theartsdesk.com/index.php?op ... Itemid=107

PJ Harvey: Political but no protest songs ****
Written by Russ Coffey

PJ Harvey has been shouty, and she has been tremulous. She has crunched guitars and caressed pianos. She has explored almost every emotion experienced on an ever-evolving musical journey. But on Let England Shake, her first solo album for almost four years, she’s turned away from the world within to give her take on the island on which she lives. And this bittersweet reflection feels like the culmination of everything she's been before.

There’s nothing as radio-friendly here as 2000’s "Good Fortune", but it’s still her most immediate and accessible album yet. And that’s down to the beauty of the melodies. Vocally Harvey has retained much of the haunted innocence she learnt to project on White Chalk. Musically, there’s a bit of all her periods except that hard Captain Beefheart-style guitar. And lyrically the effect is conveyed by startling images and sentences heard through musical phrases that give as much meaning as the words. In “The Last Living Rose”, the upbeat indie melody is affectionate even when Harvey sings, “Take me back to beautiful England/ And gray damp filthiness of ages”. The opener, “Let England Shake”, tells us that “England’s dancing days are done” in swing time, whilst the shimmering, Gallipoli-referencing “On Battleship Hill” uses a choirgirl voice to describe “jagged mountains... like teeth in a rotting mouth”. And although Harvey’s words speak of war and decay, there’s no protest sloganeering. It’s all more subtle and complex.

The only times that the album seems to flag are when Harvey falls back on the musical harshness that, like Nick Cave, has sometimes made her work as difficult as it is satisfying. It happens in passages on "Bitter Branches" and "All and Everyone". But other than that, the uniqueness and ambition of this album are quite astonishing. Let England Shake is fully deserving of all its hype.

[sau]

Spin Magazine

Rating: 9 out of 10

PJ Harvey

'Let England Shake'

Zooming in on war's carnage, Polly Jean Harvey discovers a startling new world of sound and fury

PJ Harvey is beloved for a cornucopia of reasons -- her ferocity, her frankness, that wild, slicing yelp -- but looseness has never been one of them. Even Harvey's best records can feel like overwound springs: They're meticulous, exacting exercises in tension and control. That restraint reached its pinnacle on 2007's stark, piano-led White Chalk; and on its long-awaited follow-up, Harvey finally gives. Slack, virile, and fantastically rhythmic, Let England Shake is a glorious uncoiling.

Recorded live in a church in Dorset, England (her home county), with longtime collaborators John Parish, Mick Harvey, and producer Flood, Let England Shake is fixated, lyrically, on the vagaries of war. Harvey alludes to the Gallipoli invasion by the British and French armies on April 25, 1915 (a quick, amphibious strike at the Ottoman Empire that devolved into a long, vicious battle); but war being what it is, many of these tracks are horrific in a timeless way ("I have seen and done things I want to forget / Soldiers fell like lumps of meat / Blown and shot-out beyond belief," she chants in "The Words That Maketh Murder").

Harvey has eschewed the notion that this is an overtly political record, but Let England Shake does suggest certain universal truths—self is subsumed by country, interiors are trumped by exteriors, and dried blood always leaves the ground "dull and browny-red." When she sings about her birth nation -- as she does often, howling, "Goddamn, Europeans! Take me back to beautiful England!" on "The Last Living Rose" -- she's both euphoric and disgusted, not unlike a soldier deep in the field.

Musically, the record is stompy and melodic, and at times Harvey's voice can be giddy and girlish. She often plays an oddly tuned Autoharp, nodding both to the Carter Family and to countless generations of elementary-school grads (or at least the ones lucky enough not to have been saddled with a plastic recorder), and its simplicity suits this batch of songs awfully well. Nearly effortless to strum, the Autoharp is very much a folk tool, and despite the intensity of the stories she's telling, Harvey's vocals and arrangements -- now liberated from fussier instrumentation -- sound remarkably free.

The title track, built around a jumpy xylophone riff, is an addictive cautionary tale ("Pack up your troubles, let's head out / To the fountain of death and splash about," she sings cheerfully), while the woozy single "Written on the Forehead," which samples Niney the Observer's reggae classic "Blood and Fire," is bright and unexpectedly synthetic, like a plastic Easter egg nestled in real grass. Over and over, Harvey marries grisly lyrics to buoyant music, so the borrowed refrain "Let it burn, let it burn" ends up sounding both apocalyptic and strangely celebratory. It's easy to hum along, never knowing the horrors you're inadvertently endorsing.

Harvey's eclecticism -- her ability to gracefully flit between genres and tones -- is what keeps her work so vital, yet Let England Shake is still something of a revelation. Arguably her most pop-friendly record since 2000's Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, it's an intense indictment of the way countries fight, apolitical only in that it outlines what war does to human beings, not governments. Sung with warmth, these tracks offer a welcome antidote to her more familiar performance mode -- spectacular austerity. They're as bloody and forceful as the battles Harvey references.

By Amanda Petrusich

http://www.spin.com/reviews/pj-harvey-l ... ke-vagrant

[Black Hearted Love]

wonderful review. love the words she used to describe her & her work

[derbyshirepaul]

A rather bizarre review in the New Yorker. Clearly someone who has not been able to move with Polly's ever-changing musical palette. Almost worth reading to try and guess at what this reviewer was hearing as opposed to the others who have been hearing such great things.

And this from a magazine that hosted Polly doing a solo set in an intimate New York venue in 2006 as part of an annual event. I adored the show (managing to get tickets and arrange a holiday from the UK around the date). I hope Polly rejects any future offers of collaboration with them!

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2011/02/07/110207crmu_music_frerejones

[CaliforniaKilledMe]

A rather bizarre review in the New Yorker. Clearly someone who has not been able to move with Polly's ever-changing musical palette. Almost worth reading to try and guess at what this reviewer was hearing as opposed to the others who have been hearing such great things.

And this from a magazine that hosted Polly doing a solo set in an intimate New York venue in 2006 as part of an annual event. I adored the show (managing to get tickets and arrange a holiday from the UK around the date). I hope Polly rejects any future offers of collaboration with them!

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/musical/2011/02/07/110207crmu_music_frerejones

The critics of The New Yorker are notoriously snarky in their critiques and often only do it in order to be the lone voice of dissent and to come across as "above it all". For this reason, I don't read The New Yorker.

[soulfadelic]

Sasha Frere-Jones's critical barometer is pretty worthless these days. he dumped his entire record collection at Kim's a few years ago and my friend scored amazing first-edition vinyls of The Birthday Party, The Raincoats, and The Fall. I guess he needs to make room for all the Rihanna CDs he seems to love! I do think he gets it right talking about The Glorious Land, it's a very ham-fisted track.

[derbyshirepaul]

Sasha Frere-Jones's critical barometer is pretty worthless these days. he dumped his entire record collection at Kim's a few years ago and my friend scored amazing first-edition vinyls of The Birthday Party, The Raincoats, and The Fall. I guess he needs to make room for all the Rihanna CDs he seems to love! I do think he gets it right talking about The Glorious Land, it's a very ham-fisted track.

Thanks for your analysis, soulfadelic; at least your friend did well out of it!

I'm not going to respond to your comment re The Glroious Land - waiting a few more days to then immerse myself in the whole album!

[sau]

Sasha Frere-Jones's critical barometer is pretty worthless these days. he dumped his entire record collection at Kim's a few years ago and my friend scored amazing first-edition vinyls of The Birthday Party, The Raincoats, and The Fall. I guess he needs to make room for all the Rihanna CDs he seems to love! I do think he gets it right talking about The Glorious Land, it's a very ham-fisted track.

Rihanna? Yikes! :-(

A Polly song ham-fisted? Wash your mouth out, soulfadelic. :-)

The reference to land being damaged by tanks and deformed children doesn't make me think of England; I'm pretty sure there has never been a single tank battle on English soil!

Images of tank battles and deformed children make me think of Iraq because loads of depleted Uranium have been dropped on Iraq resulting in a lot of deformed children being born in Iraq and in the USA. A thoroughly depressing and sad subject.

[Black Hearted Love]

thanks to our franch colleagues to have scanned the pages
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