Her eighth studio LP sees longstanding collaborators John Parish and Mick Harvey contribute omnipresently, as the wondrously mystifying whirr of autoharps and mellotron warbles bounce about Harvey's now-trademark dirty guitar slump. Yet where Harvey has at times been altogether symbiotic in her approach to songwriting (the haunting wails of White Chalk are all but incomparable with its scruffy, scatty predecessor Uh Huh Her), Let England Shake sees the West Country introvert wed her occasionally conflictual, or schizophrenic modus operandi in peaceful, if somewhat perturbed harmony, On Battleship Hill particularly conjoining the despondent sounds of solitude (think a Medieval siren bawling White Chalk from ensnarement in a lofty turret) with melancholic full band fleshing. Whilst The Last Living Rose may sound jaunty amidst buoyant saxophones and latent trombones, lyrically, Harvey turns vehemently patriotic, celebrating the grit and grime of seemingly Stuart England, lyrics of 'the grey, damp filthiness of ages' commemorated and extolled. Either PJ's spent too long cowering away in Dorset or too much time on foreign soil. Regardless, she's been shaken up in all the right ways, as Let England Shake cements its roots in the musical fibre of this year and, quite possibly, many a year to come. The Words That Maketh Murder rambles, gathering pace like barbed tumbleweed rolling through Leone picture having been left to writhe following the Desert Sessions, Harvey, Parish and Harvey increasingly exasperatingly questioning: 'What if I take my problem to the United Nations?' whilst the wild and wily England serves as something of an ode to 'the nations' dirt' as indiscernible background instrumentation obfuscates the love letter-like emotiveness with which her piercing vocals are imbued. Bitter Branches is vitriolic, ramshackle post-punk at its most crude and proves yet another pinnacle of a record so impeccable were its tracklist charted it'd purvey an unfailingly horizontal line. Atop unnerving bugle fanfare courtesy of the HM Irish Guards, The Glorious Land is something of a modern-day Jerusalem, Harvey again rhetorically musing: 'How is our glorious country bestowed?' before contorting her fondness for our rolling hills and 'stinking alleys' startlingly, as she professes that deformed and orphaned children are 'the glorious fruit of our land'. By God does she adore the muddied earth upon which we walk but politically and morally something's gone awry and this long player's all the better for it. No country's devoid of imperfections and shortcomings and we're all aware of these British Isles' pervasive flaws. But try and fault Let England Shake, as it's as imperturbable an album as you could ever dream of experiencing.
