PJ Harvey – Let England Shake

I am going to get a “Let England Shake” tattoo just as soon as there's no chance of it taking itself literally. In the meantime I'm going to worry about this album being one of those albums that are just too good to listen to. I was reduced to a sobbing wreck (in my head, just a bit glassy-eyed on the outside) by the time the song 'England' came around (the Eddie Cochran bit, if you're interested). I love the way this album incorporates other songs into its own compositions: Eddie Cochran, Niney the Observer, whoever came up with 'Constantinople'(The Four Lads, it now transpires) in a way that pumps up the originals with new meaning, or rather, it returns them to their literal meaning, picking away at the metaphor, the beautiful bouncing joke, until a bright shiny bone appears. In short, I think this is the best war album since Scott Walker's Tilt. All we need now is a war film that is its equal, a role fulfilled in 1995 by Ulysses' Gaze (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulysses'_Gaze ) by Theòdoros Angelòpoulos. The video for the title track has a Museum of Everything feel to it, but it's this performance in front of Gordon Brown on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show that best expresses the strangeness and wonder of this album:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0M5MFryU3c

Here is the (ahem) official video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2Qlb0qFLFE