Significant longplayers from yesteryear
14 February 2026
The now 56-year-old, unique songstress PJ Harvey released her 8th LP
LET ENGLAND SHAKE on 14 February 2011, today 15 years ago. One of
my beloved PJ albums.
The record was written over a 2+1⁄2-year period, and recorded in five weeks
at a church in Dorset (UK) during April and May 2010. It peaked at #8 in the UK
and #32 in the US.
PJ: “I knew that I wanted the music to offset the weight of the words. That was very important.
I wanted the music to be full of energy and to be very uplifting and unifying, almost insightful
in its creation of energy.
It took me a long time to find out how to sing such words because to sing it in the wrong voice would have given it the wrong feeling– maybe too self-important and dogmatic. I wanted the songs to be much more ambiguous than that. This was the way that the language was best moved from lip to ear.”
Pitchfork said: “On Let England Shake, Harvey is not often upfront or forceful.
Her lyrics, though, are as disturbing as ever. Here, she paints vivid portraits of war,
and her sharp focus on the up-close, hand-to-hand devastation of World War I,
depicting “soldiers falling like lumps of meat, provides a fitting setting for today’s battlegrounds.”
KEY SINGLE
ALBUM