Day 7 of 10: My all time favorite albums that are STILL in rotation. And now things are getting interesting. I promised John Cari and Darius Gambino a surprise, and today I'm going with a choice that might not be familiar to a lot of people. It's 2011's stunning album "Let England Shake" by PJ Harvey. I can honestly say it's easily my favorite record of the last decade (if not longer) and it rightfully belongs on this list as I continue to listen to it and absorb its mastery regularly.
"Let England Shake", Harvey's eighth studio album, is a dramatic yet mature effort, steeped in influences ranging from folk, rock, world and dance music and chock full of arresting moments that have the potential to shock the listener into silence. Harvey handles serious themes like war and the effect it has on society, and the result is jaw-droppingly good.
Harvey's eerie vocals on the title track set the tone for the album, and - with the opening words of "The Last Living Rose", the album's magnificent second track - you know you're witnessing something extraordinary. When I first heard this track I played it something like 30 times in a row and kept discovering more. And yet it's just an appetizer: The track's tortured vocals hint that something is seriously amiss in Harvey's England, and as the album soldiers on, more and more clues are revealed.
Mike Williams of NME wrote: "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 that's evident by track three, "The Glorious Land", whose call to arms is punctuated by a bugle's call.
There are so many highlights here: The sad beauty of "England", with its other-worldly horns and chant; the haunting "In the Dark Places" straightforward rock of "Bitter Branches"; the ambitious "Written on the Forehead" convincingly mixes Middle-eastern themes with gospel. The album culminates with "The Color of the Earth", on which Harvey and her bandmates join together for a traditional-sounding folk song about a soldier's tragic end during the Gallipoli campaign of World War I, a stark reminder -- nearly a century later -- of the reality of war.
As I revisit the tracks on this album for this post, I just keep muttering to no one in particular "Damn this is incredible." Harvey has managed to paint a rich picture of her home country -- a nation born, consumed and ravaged by battle -- at a critical moment in history; it's a powerful statement ten years after the start of the war in Afghanistan. But despite the horrors contained within, this is a deeply rewarding record and I encourage everyone to give it a listen.
PS - "Let England Shake" is a visual album -- so much so that the filmmaker Seamus Murphy supplied a short film for all 12 tracks and they're worth watching too!
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