Shakey England

The first time I went to see PJ Harvey live, my pre-gig attitude was a bit like, 'yeah, so?' I'd loved To Bring You My Love and Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea (the only two Polly albums I had) but she was just one of these habitual musicians who I didn't think about on a regular basis. Then I shuffled down to Leeds Met Union with my good friends Paul and Melanie and preceded to be blown away. It's a bit wank to say music makes you feel spiritual but I don't know how else to describe that feeling when music does something to you all through your body that language can't describe. When it makes your head fill with little chemicals like you're in love or lust or something. It was swelteringly hot that evening and as she played my grey anxious eyes suddenly all felt shifted and shiny and more alive.
Every so often Paul would go to the toilet or something and Melanie and I would make out. It was a special evening. I think the second time I saw PJ Harvey was at All Tomorrow's Parties. It was the one curated by Vincent 'The Cock' Gallo. I stood through the entire painful Gallo set (he was having a wank with his guitar for about three hours and feeling very proud of himself and superior) because there was a rumor Polly was going to come and do a duet with him. And did she? Did she bollocks. But her set was good.

I put those memories aside for a few more years and continued taking her presence for granted until I discovered the latest album, 'Let England Shake', which I cannot stop listening to. Sounds so beautiful and spooky and comforting. Some of it sounds far off and calm and some of it is beautiful folk pop and some of it is wonderfully strange and some of it is full of big drums approaching like marching soldiers. To the likes of me it's an incredibly accessible album, and I am a sucker for that, but it still sounds totally fresh and new.
It's a concept album about England. That sort of thing always makes me nervous from someone who's not outspokenly unpatriotic as far as I know. But whilst it's not an explicit critique of nationalism and colonialism, neither is it bigging up those things or bigging up 'being English', whatever that means.
The album certainly lays down graphically the horrors of war. Trusty wikipedia tells me PJ Harvey spent a lot of time researching the history of conflicts such as World War I, especially the Gallipoli Campaign and the testimonies of civilians and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The album is an examination of relationships to England told through various different voices. Many times Polly sings from the point of view of WWI soldiers who are sent off as canon-fodder. In 'The Colour of the Earth' John Parish takes on the main vocals, as a soldier singing about his dead friend: 'He's still up on that hill/20 years on that hill./nothing more than a pile of bones/but I think of him still'.
PJ Harvey's attitude to England is mostly ambivalence played out in beautifully melancholic, anxious music and lyrics: 'I live and die through England/It leaves sadness./It leaves a taste a bitter one' to 'Let me walk through the stinking alleys/to the music of drunken beatings,/past the Thames river, glistening like gold/hastily sold for nothing'. She paints quite the picture.
The final lines in the song 'England' go 'Undaunted, never failing love for you,/England/Is all that I cling to', which could make you vom taken out of context. What I take from it is it's a song about someone who clings to England with an empty, hopeless and misguided love though they know deep down patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. The preceding lines are all about how they search for something that they can get from England but they find only a 'withered vine,/a bitter one/reaching from the nations dirt/England,/I have searched for your springs/but people stagnate with time'. England is referred to like a person, so it's kind of like a song about a doomed relationship. Similarly vomit inducing is the title 'The Glorious Land', but the lyrics go like this: 'And what is the glorious fruit of our land?/Its fruit is deformed children/What is the glorious fruit of our land?/Its fruit is orphaned children.' Hello, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya.

PJ Harvey is particularly fascinated with the first world war and the futility of being sent off to die in the trenches, 'soldiers fell like lumps of meat,/blown and shot beyond belief/arms and legs were in the trees'. Again, she's a great conjurer of imagery and her lyrics have a kind of aesthetic beauty to them even when they're about something really horrible.

Now, the music...I have never been great with describing music, I guess because I'm not really a musician. I find the sounds PJ Harvey uses on this album rich and many-layered. Like a soft bed in the middle of a dark scary but extremely gorgeous forest. Someone described this album as sounding like 'world music' and I can kind of see that because it does borrow and mix together a lot of styles but never sounds disjointed. Her voice soars, though is for the most part deeper than on previous albums. Sometimes high and strange, sometimes ably accompanied by many other finely voiced people such as John Parish.

'Let England Shake' was actually a birthday present for my brother but I spent the night before his celebrations taking speed so it hasn't got to him yet. I will be very sad to relinquish it!