(100) Days of Soundtrack: #10 – PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

Have I ever heard PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake? Presumably not. I don’t recall a note of it. Harvey’s work tends to inspire me to WANT to listen to it, though. Surely, with the noise about Let England Shake when it came out, I must have spun it once? I couldn’t have just ignored the album as much as I’d wanted to hear it, right?

Nope, I’m pretty sure it never crossed my ears. I’d remember the departure from PJ’s distinctive, husky voice. I’d recall how it felt far more upbeat than a PJ Harvey album ever should be, even as it was written about a war. I’d be less self-flagellating about how I also never listened to the acclaimed Uh Huh Her, somehow… or how I’ve only spun the brilliant To Give You My Love once all the way through. Polly Jean was a haunting voice of the 90s, and I got to see her one-up U2 opening for them a decade before this album was released. Through all this, though, I was sure I must have gone back for more, to explore her work. This is why, on being recommended her, I jumped to get a little more familiarity. Yet there is enough I should remember here that I’m confident even this was passed over.

It’s interesting the layers put into this album. The bugle call sample flitting through “The Glorious Land” brings to mind old Looney Tunes episodes. The vibraphonic melody line of the title track makes the album start off on a playful note. “The Words that Maketh Murder” brings in two 50s-musical background singers, and “Written on the Forehead” brings in what seems like a 20s barbershop juxtaposed with what sounds like a reggae sample. There are these elements of “fun” tossed into a concept album about World War I. It makes sense in an odd way, in that this is how we are distracted from the reality of war… the soundbytes we get back glamorize it more than it really is. If we think of patriotic marches (and we can pull up the bugle sample again here, or the feel of “The Colour of the Earth,” for a reference point), there’s always a joy and a refusal to think about the real cost of war. It’s smart, leaving some disjointed moments for us to analyze, and see how the sounds carry the album message.

That message exactly? It seems to be a bit about alienation, and even the music itself fits in. Whatever else can be said, this doesn’t really begin to sound like PJ Harvey until “In The Dark Places,” which may well be the closest to what a casual listener might be familiar with of her oeuvre. There’s the Chopsticks music-box piano of “Hanging on the Wire,” which sounds like a Stars track, lovely though it is. There are hymn-like songs like “On Battleship Hill.” “England” sounds at times like it should be a Bjork song, and in other spots the album feels like Kate Bush. At all times, there is a discomfort, like the song is tentative, shouldn’t be here. Overall though, this is tired music. It is tired like soldiers in the field. It is tired like the public grows tired of combat. These songs feel sparse, sometimes end early, often seem incomplete. They are ghost songs, the lot of them. That alone feels like enough to get the point across.

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