★★★★★
In 1995 PJ Harvey released her first proper solo album after breaking the PJ Harvey Trio up the year prior. While women had gained a much stronger foothold in the music scene by the nineties, there were still two main camps at this point. On one hand, you had the aggressiveness of Riot Grrl and on the other hand, you had the singer-songwriter based musicians that would dominate the Lilith Fair in years to come. Somewhere between these two, you had PJ Harvey...
- www.punknews.org
2015-06-11
★★★★★
The myth of pre-9/11 New York City being a raw and authentic metropolis oozing with sexuality is probably false. The myth of post-9/11 New York City becoming a spit-shined and polished Disneyland is probably false too. But the definite truth, and definite cliche at this point, is that 9/11 changed everything with a spread unrivaled by any major event in American history. Truly, nothing was the same after that day. Including ...
- www.sputnikmusic.com
2014-03-27
★★★★★
Since PJ Harvey is a veteran artist who, in her 20-year career, has yet to either make a bad record or repeat herself, to call her latest, Let England Shake, one of her strongest efforts to date is a bold statement, but it's true -- this a brilliant record by an artist impervious to aging. This, her tenth full-length, and first as an "indie" artist, is a conflicted commentary on her native nation's complicated, war-torn history and lordly jingoism...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
On the generally acclaimed Let England Shake, Harvey gave her music a bony, volkish edge, flaying it back to strummed autoharp, electric guitar and crude drums, mongrelising it with awkwardy intrusive sampling of Middle Eastern singers, dub interjections and huntsmen's horns. Seamus Murphy's cinematography complements this approach perfectly: not storyboarded, but collaged from various journeys around the island made during 2011, from the remotest hedgerows to the heart of London...
- www.uncut.co.uk
2012-03-06
★★★★★
On my trip to England in March 2011, PJ Harvey's recently-released Let England Shake was my most frequent soundtrack. Now, basing listening choices on region-specificity can feel overly contrived and a little corny; that is, making a point of listening to Kanye West in Chicago or Sonic Youth in New York is simply trying too hard, L.A. Woman in L.A. is way too on-the-nose, etc. But Harvey's album had two qualities that made it a must listen...
- www.popmatters.com
2012-02-02
★★★★★
At some point between flirting with nu-metal, pop punk and UK garage I discovered PJ Harvey, who was strutting around in a white catsuit on MTV2 and singing spooky love songs to scarecrow-like men (my thoughts on Thom Yorke have changed ... slightly). I bought Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea and liked it, but a year later I managed to get my hands on a copy of Dry. After one listen, I was in love. Recorded at the Icehouse in Yeovil, Dry was released by Too Pure in June 1992...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2011-10-11
★★★★★
PJ Harvey is an artist who inspires fierce devotion in her fans, and as such, is perfectly suited for an iTunes Sessions release, which can tend to be required listening only for hardcore fans or those who fancy themselves completists...
- www.prefixmag.com
2011-09-22
★★★★★
Goto commentsLeave a commentShare Let it Shake You to the Core To begin, Let England Shake is an achievement. Fans of PJ Harvey will fall deeper in love with her, and skeptics may just be won over by the genius of this record. Yes, it's about England: Harvey, like many Brits, seems inspired (or agitated) by the vast range of English culture--its monarchy, its infamous colonial influence, its under-appreciated street culture. Yet you don't have to be an Anglophile to get it...
- www.mxdwn.com
2011-05-30
★★★★★
A cannonball is fired across an expansive battlefield. A quietly confident woman, bedecked in a regimental uniform, strides across the field strumming an autoharp. Following her, a band of similarly garbed musicians carry bugles and enormous marching bass drums. The woman chronicles the brutal events, recounting stories of having seen "soldiers fall like lumps of meat, blown and shot out beyond belief"...
- www.state.ie
2011-04-29
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