Album review: PJ Harvey, 'Let England Shake'
Rating: 2.5 stars (out of 4)
Polly Jean Harvey has a well-deserved reputation for making music that leaves bruises, the soundtrack for a trauma ward. But on “Let England Shake” (Vagrant) she is not in the listener’s face, demanding attention. She stands in the middle distance, her music a bit vague, out of focus, shrouded in fog and reverb. Her voice is higher than usual, and her trusty guitar is reduced to a secondary weapon behind an autoharp, of all things. In addition, she shifts the perspective from first-person psychodramas to third-person narratives, which further distances the listener from the singer’s usually upfront emotions.
It all sounds like a letdown at first, an ill-defined sidestep away from what she does best. It’s not at all a rock album, and compared to instant classics such as “To Bring You My Love” (1995) and “Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea” (2000) it feels tentative and ill-defined. But, like the gothic, piano-led drama on her 2007 album, “White Chalk,” she transforms this left turn into something all her own. It is not her finest album, but it has its moments of undeniable power.
Though Harvey recorded the new album with a small group of trusted collaborators – longtime friend John Parish, Nick Cave sidekick Mick Harvey, producer Flood – the singer is not content to reprise her past.
Seemingly incongruous snippets of music flicker in and out of what are essentially atmospheric folk-pop songs: the melody for the ‘50s novelty hit "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)" tapped out on xylophone for the title track, an out-of-tune bugle blowing “charge” on “The Glorious Land,” a reference to Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” amid the carnage of “The Words That Maketh Murder,” a sample of the reggae song “Blood and Fire” on “Written on the Forehead,” a ululating Middle Eastern singer competing with Harvey’s voice on “England.”
Some of it is off-putting; the cavalry charge in “The Glorious Land” sounds more annoying with each listen. But all that incongruity has a purpose. It mirrors the British singer’s own profound ambiguity about her home country, a land whose legacy fills her with pride, sadness and more than occasional horror. The latter emotion is conveyed not with shock-and-awe pyrotechnics, but a muted, almost dead-pan matter-of-factness. She describes barren landscapes decorated with soldiers’ mutilated bodies, the way the earth discolors when it mingles with blood, how women’s arms resemble “bitter branches” as they wave their loved ones off to sacrifice their bodies in some unnamed conflict.
Images of war course through many of the lyrics, specifically the slaughter that occurred at the infamous Gallipoli campaign in World War I. Harvey doesn’t preach, she merely describes, the lilting voice and the light melodies creating a surreal backdrop for mayhem.
There are a few moments of prime Harvey, most notably “Written on the Forehead.” "People throwing dinars at the belly-dancers/In a sad circus by a trench of burning oil,” she sings. It’s the start of what could be a classic Apocalyptic novel or movie, but Harvey says all she needs inside of four minutes.
Later in the song, she chants, “Let it burn, let it burn,” in a voice like vapor, as if to conceal itself as it invades the listner’s dreams.
greg@gregkot.com