#459 PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

I never was so int PJ Harvey, but the 2011 lists wouldn't let up on this one.

This is a profoundly uncomfortable record. Harvey's tremulous treble quavers over top of minor key, ramshackle churn, everything fragile and nervous. It's an album about the state of the world, and it accurately reflects existence circa 2011, full of doubt and fear, channeling Great War imagery to evoke gaping despair. Everything is off. Glory of state anthems are sung sardonically by Sound of Music marionettes, The National bass surges pulse boreal over hillsides, trees bristle with the creak of the Tom Waits songs played by the tiny couple in Mullholland Drive.

Harvey finds herself wandering like a ghost through the England she loved, but displaced and disconnected like a ghost awakened 100 years after her death and horrified at the state of things The cold and space and grey and green of England seep everywhere as Harvey sings its name as if mourning a long dead lover. Again and again trumpets and vocal snippets overlay, as if played by another band next door or on an errant state radio, keeping you out of step and out of synch and uneasy.

It is a masterstroke of ill ease, capturing the feeling of shame and disdain any thinking person feels if they really think about the world these days, doubling down on the Radiohead modern stomach-pit jitters aesthetic. It wholly succeeds in doing what it set out to do, perhaps too well; I may never have the energy to listen to it again 3.5/5

You might like this if: you want catharsis for modern ennui. If you're reading this circa 2030, and the world somehow still exists at all, this is how we felt these days, listen and learn.