{"id":59,"date":"2019-12-01T15:26:45","date_gmt":"2019-12-01T15:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/?p=59"},"modified":"2020-04-25T17:07:25","modified_gmt":"2020-04-25T17:07:25","slug":"let-england-shake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/let-england-shake\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cLet England Shake\u201d \u2013 PJ Harvey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"PJ Harvey Let England Shake Andrew Marr Show 18th April 2010\" width=\"780\" height=\"585\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/64C6Ih4QlrE?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">PJ Harvey is one of an elite few artists whose albums rank among the best of each of the last three decades. If she\u2019s somehow still underrated, it\u2019s because she\u2019s always been ever so slightly out of step with the scenes of the moment.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She entered the \u201890s a uniquely raw and confrontational voice, occupying what would be a brief, grunge-adjacent moment in the UK before Britpop took over. After breaking up her eponymous trio she released a series of excellent records exploring elements of blues, folk and trip-hop, peaking with 2000\u2019s <em>Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea<\/em> \u2013 the album I\u2019d argue best closes the book on \u201890s alt rock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the later \u201800s, Harvey swapped her signature powerhouse vocal delivery for a more vulnerable head voice. She continued to hone and expand that sound on 2011\u2019s <em>Let England Shake,<\/em> a prescient meditation on Englishness composed largely on autoharp. It\u2019s a weird album that\u2019s very different from her acclaimed early work. I think it\u2019s also her masterpiece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are several songs I considered highlighting here, but I\u2019m going with the title track \u2013 in part because of this early solo performance on BBC\u2019s <em>The Andrew Marr Show.<\/em> The final recorded version of the track is built around a xylophone melody that mimics \u201cIstanbul (Not Constantinople),\u201d but in this performance it\u2019s an explicitly sampled loop of the phrase \u201cTake me back to Constantinople \/ no you can\u2019t go back to Constantinople.\u201d Dressed in raven-black feathers that would stick as her aesthetic throughout the 2010s, Harvey strums her autoharp and prophesies, \u201cThe West\u2019s asleep, let England shake \/ weighted down with silent dead \/ I fear our blood won\u2019t rise again,\u201d while, surreally, then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown watches the performance live on a studio monitor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Less than a month later, Brown would resign and David Cameron would take office, and we all know how things have gone since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PJ Harvey is one of an elite few artists whose albums rank among the best of each of the last three decades. If she\u2019s somehow still underrated, it\u2019s because she\u2019s always been ever so slightly out of step with the scenes of the moment.&nbsp; She entered the \u201890s a uniquely raw and confrontational voice, occupying&hellip; <\/p>\n<div class=\"readmore-wrapper\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.richbradley.org\/songs\/201x-favorites\/let-england-shake\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-59","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-201x-favorites","tag-pj-harvey"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Let England Shake - 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