Let England Shake

Definitely the weirdest PJ Harvey album I’ve listened to yet. Sounds a bit like Joanna Newsom at points. Still very good though

Dudel Dudel Dudel

I let England shake as long as they keep this music for themselves. Even though it wasn't extraordinarily bad, it was pretty damn bad.

this was pretty good pj harvey is consistently great

While I've heard the name before, this will be my first listen of any PJ Harvey song. Seconds into the first track, I thought "well, this is different. I usually don't like different, but I think I like this."

⭐⭐⭐.75

I don't know what I was expecting, but this absolutely blew me away. Wow.

I like this album a lot but I think this one and its sequel are albums you spend a year with and then rarely go back to.

I choose to believe all the stuff about her researching for years is just PR and actually one afternoon she just listened to the excellent and uncharacteristic Motörhead tune 1916 a couple of times and thought hmm I could do that in a more indie style and stretch it out with different perspectives. Lemmy even sings in a higher register than usual like Polly. Go check it out.

Taking the edge of her earlier work, this album moves from post-punk/alt rock into a more indie sound - cleaner guitars, more atmosphere and space, less in your face intensity. Musically it's very of it's time - nice enough but a bit predictably following the beats, but it works really well to let her voice and words come through.

Felt Bjork-adjacent. Kinda pitchy, just ok.

Not exactly to my taste, but her music is interesting and varied. This 1001 list has made me exceedingly grateful to artists that make albums that don’t sound the same all the way through or don’t heavily imitate somebody who came before them.

Second PJ album to come up in a few days. One that passed me by at the time and a bit of a departure from her more rocking earlier stuff. Definitely quite inventive, but I'm on the fence about how successful it is. Ultimately probably needs a few more listens to fully grasp it.

Not my favorite PJ, and PJ is my favorite.

On some songs, her voice reminds me of Phoebe from Friends. On others, it sounds like Yoko Ono.

Ok, mean jokes aside, usually I'm all for folky anti-war songs; but something about the sound of this just isn't for me. It sounds like she's got a decent voice hidden somewhere in there, but the melodies and the stylistic choices she makes ruin it. The lyrics don't stand out to me either. I do like the instrumentation on some tracks. My favorite song was Hanging In The Wire, but I didn't like it enough to find it playlist worthy. 2/5.

My favourite album of all time. A complete & utter masterpiece.

I fell in love with this album the first time I listened to it when it was released back in 2011, and my love for it has grown deeper with the many subsequent listens since then. Polly's efforts to write about war not from a political perspective but from an entirely human perspective resulted in an astounding album, with stark, heavy words contrasted with beautiful, uplifting music. This is an album that becomes part of your core, if you let it in.

No amount of praise could adequately sum up my feelings for this album. I just love it so much.

I absolutely loved the first half of this album. Such a cool ethereal sound with unique samples which were sometimes challenging. The second half was nice enough but didnt keep up the momentum as much as I'd like. 4.3/5 -> 4/5

This album is very peaceful. It's also really good. The singing is amazing. Almost everything about it is amazing. It's more soft than maybe I would like in an album, but still really good. It also seems very familiar and I'm not sure why.

I didn’t really feel this record when it first came out, which was the case for pretty much all of her work after “Stories From The City…” but I got more out of it this listen. There’s a lot of beauty and depth to it, and I’m sure I’ll find even more on subsequent listens. I still feel like some tracks end abruptly when they could have gone somewhere interesting, but maybe that’s the point. Definitely need to spend some time with the lyrics to get the full context.

I liked this. It was fun. Got a little strange in spots (The Glorious Land) but overall very enjoyable.

I’m at a 5. Possibly higher.

I just feel somber after listening to that, which in this case, is the hallmark of a highly effective album. This is a war-based album, one that touches on real history that I believe spans from World War I to World War II, with a slight commentary on the events of the Middle East that dominated much of the 2000s on “Written on the Forehead”. It is soberingly & brilliantly written, with many of these tracks seemingly from the perspective of soldiers either in the moment or reminiscing with a PTSD-driven eye, yet it musically leans towards a garage rock vibe that anchors the album in a sort of contemporary folk-esque way. These feel like they could’ve been written years ago, and given the intense research PJ apparently did in making this album feel as accurate & sort of emotionally pulling as possible, I think she did a great job at somehow evoking the events of a century ago while making it feel palatable to modern tastes.

I’ll give a lot of credit to the production work here; this is a 2011 album, with garage rock leanings, but it feels like it could have been recorded today. None of the obvious production marks of the early 2010s are here, with a very consistent set of instruments (namely the lower, heavier percussion that anchors a lot of the tracks), and as such, it sort of adds to the vaguely timeless feel of these tracks. Sure, some of these tracks have extended intros that feel a little long in the moment, but I think they work in the sense that they build up tension very well, especially after some of the heavier tracks here. Vocally, I think “Let England Shake” is a bit of a bad tonesetter for the more thoughtful & narrative tone she takes for most of the album. I really like a lot of her vocals here, even when she goes full Bjork on “England”.

I can’t really understand some of the 1s & 2s on the site; either they didn’t pay an inch of attention to the lyricism, their brains can’t come up with the imagery that she’s trying to evoke, or they just bounced off of this for reasons I can’t possibly figure out. Yes, it should not take a (then) 42-year-old English lady to remind me of the horrors of war, but if you’re using that as an excuse to diss the album, then you were never going to engage with this in good faith. I think this might be the best PJ Harvey album we’ve gotten so far, and I already thought “Dry” was really, really good. I desperately need to relisten to “Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea”, as I think I’d appreciate it more now. As far as this goes, I think the floor here is a 4, and for my history-loving tastes & with how much I just connected to this in a sobering way, it’s easily at a 5 for me, if not higher. Very, very good stuff & yet another successful Mercury Prize-nominated/winning album.

pa ovo uopće nije loše, al ima neke čudne momente i dijelom je zaboravljivo, stoga trojka