Featured in Michael Fremer's Heavy Rotation in the September 2011 Issue of Stereophile!
"Let England Shake" was recorded in a 19th Century church in England! Pressed on 180 Gram Vinyl!
PJ Harvey's album "Let England Shake" was recorded in a 19th Century church in Dorset, on a cliff-top overlooking the sea. It was created with a cast of musicians including such long-standing allies as Flood, John Parish, and Mick Harvey. It is the 8th album for PJ, following 2007's acclaimed "White Chalk", and the Harvey /Parish collaboration "A Woman A Man Walked By".
Such are the bare facts. But what is remarkable about "Let England Shake" is bound up with its music, its abiding atmosphere - and in particular, its words. If Harvey's past work might seem to draw on direct emotional experience, this new album is rather different. Its songs center on both her home country, and events further afield in which it has embroiled itself. The lyrics return, time and again, to the Afghanistan to Gallipoli. The album they make up is not a work of protest, nor of strait-laced social or political comment. It brims with the mystery and magnetism in which she excels. But her lyric-writing in particular has arrived at a new, breathtaking place, in which the human aspects of history are pushed to the foreground. Put simply, not many people make records like this.
Features:
180 Gram Vinyl
Recorded April-May 2010 in a 19th Century church in Dorset, England
Selections:
Side A:
1. Let England Shake
2. The Last Living Rose
3. The Glorious Land
4. The Words That Maketh Murder
5. All And Everyone
6. On Battleship Hill
Side B:
1. England
2. In The Dark Places
3. Bitter Branches
4. Hanging In The Wire
5. Written On The Forehead
6. The Colour of The Earth
"Let England Shake" was recorded in a 19th Century church in England! Pressed on 180 Gram Vinyl!
PJ Harvey's album "Let England Shake" was recorded in a 19th Century church in Dorset, on a cliff-top overlooking the sea. It was created with a cast of musicians including such long-standing allies as Flood, John Parish, and Mick Harvey. It is the 8th album for PJ, following 2007's acclaimed "White Chalk", and the Harvey /Parish collaboration "A Woman A Man Walked By".
Such are the bare facts. But what is remarkable about "Let England Shake" is bound up with its music, its abiding atmosphere - and in particular, its words. If Harvey's past work might seem to draw on direct emotional experience, this new album is rather different. Its songs center on both her home country, and events further afield in which it has embroiled itself. The lyrics return, time and again, to the Afghanistan to Gallipoli. The album they make up is not a work of protest, nor of strait-laced social or political comment. It brims with the mystery and magnetism in which she excels. But her lyric-writing in particular has arrived at a new, breathtaking place, in which the human aspects of history are pushed to the foreground. Put simply, not many people make records like this.
Features:
180 Gram Vinyl
Recorded April-May 2010 in a 19th Century church in Dorset, England
Selections:
Side A:
1. Let England Shake
2. The Last Living Rose
3. The Glorious Land
4. The Words That Maketh Murder
5. All And Everyone
6. On Battleship Hill
Side B:
1. England
2. In The Dark Places
3. Bitter Branches
4. Hanging In The Wire
5. Written On The Forehead
6. The Colour of The Earth
