| Let England Shake | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio album by PJ Harvey | ||||
| Released | 11 February 2011 | |||
| Recorded | April–May 2010 at Eype Church in Dorset, United Kingdom[1] | |||
| Genre | Alternative rock, experimental, folk | |||
| Length | 40:15 | |||
| Label | Island/Vagrant | |||
| Producer | Flood, Mick Harvey, John Parish, PJ Harvey | |||
| PJ Harvey chronology | ||||
|
||||
| Singles from Let England Shake | ||||
|
||||
Let England Shake is the tenth studio album by PJ Harvey, released on 11 February 2011 in the UK. Work on it began around the time of White Chalk's release in 2007, though it is a departure from the piano-driven introspection of that album. The album was written over a period of two-and-a-half years, and recorded in a five-week period at a church in Dorset in April and May 2010.
Upon its release the album received numerous accolades. It was named "Album of the Year" for 2011 by 15 publications[2] and in September 2011 won the coveted Mercury Prize.[3] Harvey's fourth nomination overall (including another win in 2001), making her the most successful artist in the prize's history. The album also won the Uncut Music Award in November 2011.[4]
Contents |
Harvey began writing lyrics for the album before setting the words to music. She has cited the poetry of Harold Pinter and T.S. Eliot as influences, as well as the artwork of Salvador Dalí and Francisco de Goya and music of The Doors, The Pogues, and The Velvet Underground.[5] She has also spoken of researching the history of conflict, including the Gallipoli Campaign, and reading modern-day testimonies from civilians and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
During some solo shows some years prior to working on this album, Harvey had begun playing the autoharp. She told local newspaper Bridport News in 2011: "I was really enjoying this different, enormous, wide breadth of sound that the autoharp gives. It's quite a delicate sound, but it's also like having an entire orchestra at your fingertips. I began by writing quite a lot on the autoharp, and then slowly as time went by, (because this album was written over two and a half years)… my writing started moving into experimenting with different guitars, and using different sound applications, ones that I had never really experimented with."[5][6]
On the subject of a new vocal style for the album, Harvey commented that "I couldn't sing [the songs] in a rich strong mature voice without it sounding completely wrong. So I had to slowly find the voice, and this voice started to develop, almost taking on the role of a narrator."[5]
Harvey told Spinner in March 2009 that she had recorded demos for the album and planned to record in early 2010, commenting: "All I can say is that I am pleased with it, because I feel it's a grand departure from anything [I've done] before. If I've done that, then for me, it's worked. I'm already feeling like I did, and I'm happy. I'm very pleased because I'm not repeating myself."[7]
After initially searching for recording studios in Berlin in mid-2009 while touring A Woman a Man Walked By with John Parish, Harvey instead opted to record at St. Peter's Church, Eype, near Bridport in Dorset.[8] She told Bridport News: "I remembered that the man who now runs this church as an arts venue had said to me a few times if I'd ever wanted to use it for a show or rehearsals that he'd love that, and that's when I approached him and asked if we could use it."[5]
The album was recorded in the church in a five-week period in April and May 2010[5] with long-time collaborators John Parish and Mick Harvey, and with Parish and Flood co-producing; drummer Jean-Marc Butty added parts at a later stage. Much of the record was recorded live,[5] and Harvey has described the recording as reasonably improvisational, commenting: "I wanted to leave room for them so they could bring their feelings into it as well. Usually I would have planned everything and known what instrumentation I wanted. This time I demoed the songs mostly with one or two instruments with a voice and that was as much as I had. So I basically had the chords and a couple of saxophone melodies, a couple of voice melodies and that was what I took with me to the church. We rehearsed the songs as if we were rehearsing to play them live and found quite quickly that we had only rehearsed a song through maybe twice and Flood had started recording us."[5] The sessions were recorded by engineer Rob Kirwan.
The album features Harvey's first on-record use of the saxophone.
Preceding the album release, the first single, "The Words That Maketh Murder", was released by Island Records on 17 January 2011 digitally) and 7 February 2011 on vinyl (together with the non-album track "The Guns Called Me Back Again" from the album recording session). The album followed on 14 February 2011 (Europe, rest of the world) and on 15 February (Canada, US). As Island Records released the album in Europe, Canada and rest of the world, it was released by Vagrant Records in US. It is available as Digital Download on several platforms, CD and LP. [9][10][11]
After seeing Seamus Murphy's "A Darkness Visible" exhibition in London in 2008, Harvey contacted Murphy as she "wanted to speak to him more about his experiences being there in Afghanistan".[5] The collaboration grew, with Murphy taking promotional photographs in July 2010 before filming accompanying videos for each song on the album which were completed in January 2011.[12] On 14–17 July 2011 the 12 films (as whole or individually) are screened for the first time at several UK festivals.[13][14]
On 12 December 2011, Murphy's short films were released on DVD as Let England Shake: 12 Short Films by Seamus Murphy.[15]
Two of the album's tracks made their debut at the Bestival music festival in July 2009, in Harvey's only live performance of the year.[16] In April 2010, around the time of the album recording, Harvey appeared on BBC One's The Andrew Marr Show for an interview and performance of "Let England Shake",[6] in front of then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown.[17]
Harvey previewed the album with a show at the St. Peter's Church, Eype, Dorset (where the album was recorded) on 18 December 2010, performing songs from the new album as well as songs from her back catalogue.[18]
A European tour took place in February 2011, with a US leg in April, and festivals scheduled in the summer. A live performance in "La Maroquinerie" in Paris on 14 February 2011 was streamed as live webcast by Deezer[19] and also by Arte.[20] On 12 July 2011 Arte broadcast on television a 73 min recording of a February 2011 live performance in Paris Olympia.[21] Selected live performance dates to promote the album (not complete):[19]
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Aggregate scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 86%[22] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | [23] |
| The Daily Telegraph | [24] |
| Drowned in Sound | (9/10) [25] |
| The Guardian | [26] |
| The Independent | [27] |
| NME | (10/10)[28] |
| Pitchfork Media | (8.8)[29] |
| Q | [30] |
| Rolling Stone | [31] |
| Slant Magazine | [32] |
| Spin | (9/10)[33] |
| Sputnikmusic | [34] |
| Uncut | [35] |
The album was released to widespread critical acclaim. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 86, based on 42 reviews, which indicates "Universal Acclaim".[22] NME's Mike Williams stated, "Francis Ford Coppola can lay claim to the war movie. Ernest Hemingway the war novel. Polly Jean Harvey, a 41-year-old from Dorset, has claimed the war album", and gave the record a very rare 10/10 rating.[28] Amanda Petrusich, in her 9/10 review for Spin, praised its "bloody and forceful" sound,[33] Victoria Segal in Q praised its "remarkable lyrics" and "ethereal music" and gave it top marks,[30] while Peter Paphides in Mojo called it an "uncannily timely piece of work", with the artist at "her most powerful".[36] Alexis Petridis in The Guardian, awarding the record a 5-star rating, called it "a richly inventive album that's unlike anything else in Harvey's back catalogue" with the artist "at her creative peak".[26] Uncut, giving it the "Album of the Month" accolade, said that it is "the sound of someone as maddened as they are enthralled, aglow with anger and passion."[35] In The Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormick awarded it five stars out of five, calling it an "extraordinary album" and "a profound and serious work from a singer-songwriter at the height of her powers, a meditation on mankind's apparently endless appetite for self-destruction".[24] Financial Times' Ludovic Hunter-Tilney also gave it five stars, calling it "a powerful, deeply layered album about warfare" which "depicts a country poisoned by an unfinished century of bloodshed",[37] while Andy Gill in The Independent stated that the work "may be her best album", described it as "a portrait of her homeland as a country built on bloodshed and battle," and awarded it four stars out of five.[27]
Let England Shake was named the "Album of the Year" on 15 lists of the top albums of 2011.[2] It also appeared on 31 other year end album lists in the top 10.[2] Uncut, Mojo, NME and The Guardian named the album its top album of 2011[38][39][40][41] while Q placed it at number 2 on its "Top 50 albums of 2011" list,[42] and Pitchfork ranked it at number 4 on its Top 50 Albums of 2011. [43]
In September 2011, the album won the Mercury Prize. This was the second time Harvey had won the title, previously for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea in 2001. The album also won the Uncut Music Award in November 2011.
Let England Shake entered at #8 on the UK Albums Chart with first-week sales of 22,468.[44] This was an improvement of over 8,000 sales on the debut of Harvey's previous solo album, 2007's White Chalk, and made Let England Shake Harvey's second career UK Top 10 album – and first for 18 years, since Rid of Me peaked at #3 in the spring of 1993. After Harvey won the 2011 Mercury Prize, the album re-entered the chart at number 24. It was certified Gold, becoming only her second album to achieve such success, the first being Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, which won the 2001 Mercury Prize. The album has since sold approximately 130,000 copies in the UK.[45]
The album also entered at #32 on the Billboard 200 with sales of around 18,000, making it her second highest-charting album in the US after Uh Huh Her peaked at #29 in 2004.
Charts
|
Certifications
Year-end charts
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All songs written by PJ Harvey.[10]
| No. | Title | Length |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Let England Shake" | 3:09 |
| 2. | "The Last Living Rose" | 2:21 |
| 3. | "The Glorious Land" | 3:34 |
| 4. | "The Words That Maketh Murder" | 3:45 |
| 5. | "All and Everyone" | 5:39 |
| 6. | "On Battleship Hill" | 4:07 |
| 7. | "England" | 3:11 |
| 8. | "In the Dark Places" | 2:59 |
| 9. | "Bitter Branches" | 2:29 |
| 10. | "Hanging in the Wire" | 2:42 |
| 11. | "Written on the Forehead" | 3:39 |
| 12. | "The Colour of the Earth" | 2:33 |
| iTunes bonus material | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 13. | "The Nightingale" | 4:13 | |||||||
| 14. | "The Last Living Rose" (video) | 2:50 | |||||||
| 15. | "The Words That Maketh Murder" (video) | 4:25 | |||||||
| North American iTunes pre-order bonus track[52] | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No. | Title | Length | |||||||
| 13. | "The Guns Called Me Back Again" | 2:45 | |||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||
