I have had a long-time crush on PJ Harvey and her music. In fact, once I get started, it's hard for me to shut the fuck up about how wonderful she is. The reasons PJ sits high, like a dominant queen, on my list of favorite artists are numerous: she's a raven-haired slink, a sexy cool lady with a huge mouth and a siren-call voice to match it, her equally self-effacing and empowered lyrics pull no punches, her employment of chunky guitar chords that constantly fold in on themselves is addictive, her shift from punk to blues to spindly folk is effortless, her everything, everything, everything.
It's not to say, in actuality, she's perfect and I just gobble up anything she dishes out, however. I've never quite understood the major wank-fest behind her third album, To Bring You My Love, an odyssey into an unscrupulous jazz/blues hybridization - all with a bit of dirty electronica thrown in to little avail. "Meet Za Monsta" is an interesting song, but it's not enough to save the experience. I've had similar feelings when listening to Harvey's work with John Parish. There's just not enough satisfaction in the songs or the concept, not enough pure PJ for my tastes.
So PJ can certainly do wrong in my precious ears, but it ain't likely. Her latest album, Let England Shake, ain't too wrong at all. It's a simultaneous send-up, sorrowful critique and love letter written to her homeland and, in particular, its troubled history. The album sounds like you are traversing the halls of an extravagant palace - the constant, echoing guitar like pristine white marble strewn across and throughout. Harvey is the downtrodden, wilting countess, showing you around sun-soaked courtyards and stately, gold-fringed rooms to paintings of England's proud loves, shamed atrocities, gorgeous landscapes and fervent loyalties. It's a distinct mixture of beauty and disgrace, and ultimately new political territory for Harvey to tread.
On the brass-punctuated, "The Last Living Rose", Harvey sings out matter-of-factly, "god damn Europeans/take me back to beautiful England", then goes on to describe her country with both wit and morbid effervescence, "and the grey, damp filthiness of ages/and battered books and/fog rolling down behind the mountains/on the graveyards and dead sea captains". Set to a translucent, rolling guitar strum, she mourns the terrors of war on "The Words that Maketh Murder", in the high-pitched moan she first adopted on White Chalk, singing, "I've seen and done things I want to forget/I've seen soldiers fall like lumps of meat" and "coming from an unearthly place/longing to see a woman's face/instead of the words that gather pace/the words that maketh murder".
Let England Shake is full of brutal irony and earnest misery, but Harvey does her best to keep things flowing, mainly by turning her history lessons into live demonstrations. The flow does taper a bit in the middle, especially during "On Battleship Hill" and "England", however, PJ's got a cure waiting around the corner with the intense guitar slide of "Bitter Branches" and the delicate piano ballad, "Hanging in the Wire".
Let England Shake is something that is obviously near and dear to Harvey. In an interview, she claimed that until recently she had never been confident enough to write politics and history into her lyrics, but had always wanted to. Perhaps now that she is older and has vented many of her past proximal demons, her liberation is complete. However, the evolution from deeply personal, raw narratives to expansive folk songs is definitely a major shift. Those who stick firmly to her ragged blue soul may find the album pretentious and beyond scope, but those who are willing to ride along on her artistic journey can find a lot to love about Let England Shake.
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