Four Years Later, “Let England Shake” is Still Great

Let England Shake was probably my most anticipated album ever when it was released in February 2011. But when I heard it was an album about war, I was scared, because my experience with anti-war media has often been negative. Too frequently, it has this obvious “stop the fighting maaaaaannnnnn” tone, and the only emotion it creates is embarrassment on behalf of the artist, who had the audacity to think their whimpery songs could actually make a real difference in how people view international relations.

In retrospect, I should have had more faith in PJ Harvey, who is my favorite artist in large part because she never takes the obvious, easy route. On her solo albums, she has constantly done the unexpected, adopting new personas and sounds so that each album she makes is a very pure, stand-alone vision. Her last album before Let England Shake was White Chalk, a haunting, piano-driven album that shared literally no resemblance to any of her previous music and confounded many of her fans. I figured if any artist could handle the subject of war, it would be her, but it was hard to imagine someone doing justice to the topic within the confines of a 40-minute album.

On first listen, Let England Shake could be mistaken for one of those embarrassing anti-war albums. The lyrics that jump out are the violent or polemic ones, like on “The Glorious Land” when she says “what is the glorious fruit of our land?/the fruit is deformed children” while out-of-place war trumpets play in the background, or when soldiers fall “like lumps of meat” in “The Words That Maketh Murder.” Certainly, in some respects, Let England Shake fits the mold of conventional war art, with the horrifying “war is hell” imagery and generally defiant stance. But the more I’ve listened to this album over the last few years and thought about it, the more I’ve realized that it is so much deeper than it may first appear — anyone who writes it off as a shrill political album is not giving PJ Harvey enough credit and is misconstruing her intentions.

Let England Shake is primarily concerned with history and place. It is about how the past is always with us, even if we weren’t there to see it ourselves, and how a nation’s previous decisions can continue to haunt those who are still living there today. These themes are there in the lyrics, but are also cleverly present in the music itself, in particular through the use of sampling — “The Words That Maketh Murder” borrows the lyrics “I’m gonna take my problem to the United Nations” from Eddie Cochrane’s “Summertime Blues,” while “Written on the Forehead” samples “Blood and Fire” by Niney the Observer. These samples create an effect where ghosts from the history of music are present in her songs, mirroring the album’s stories of past wars and fallen soldiers that are still, in a sense, with us today.

Harvey plays an interesting role on Let England Shake, as a woman describing the theater of war, which has historically been created and populated by men. Singing in her upper register, similar to White Chalk, she mostly acts as a narrator, describing the atrocities she sees in vivid detail — in my mind, I imagine her floating around the battlefield like a ghost. The lyrics often seem inspired by World War I poets like Siegfried Sassoon, or other classic poems from Britain’s past (the story of “All and Everyone” is reminiscent of “The Charge of the Light Brigade”), and they have the same power as the stories from people who lived these wars. But while Let England Shake is heavily steeped in the past, it never forgets to relate it to the present, and it asks real questions about how people have to live with their nation’s histories.

These themes come through most clearly on “England,” where Harvey drops her role of narrator and sings directly from the current-day first-person perspective.

I live and die through England
Through England
It leaves a sadness
Remedies never were within my reach
I cannot go on as I am
Withered vine reaching from the country
That I love
England
You leave a taste
A bitter one
I have searched for your springs
But people, they stagnate with time
Like water, like air
To you, England, I cling
Undaunted, never failing love for you
England

This is obviously the song where the album’s sense of place is most apparent, and it captures this very specific, ambivalent feeling that is also common among Americans. I often feel a connection to my country and sometimes even a level of pride in it, but it is so frequently matched by disgust for the things done in America’s name, either presently or in the past. So much of Let England Shake is about this uncertain attachment, and it’s part of why I think it goes beyond just being an anti-war album: while it is criticizing moments in England’s past, it is coming from a place of deep love and connection, which is what “England” really articulates. It’s the song that really ties together the album’s themes and helps push it beyond being a stodgy history lesson.

A theme I’ve found to be present in nearly all of PJ Harvey’s work is the tension between ugliness and beauty. Her early music, in particular 1993’s Rid of Me, was self-consciously ugly and intended to shock, with abrasive production, noisy guitars, and the austere cover art showing her naked in a bathtub with her hair coiled like Medusa. 2000’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea was intentionally the opposite, an attempt to make a beautiful album with lush guitar reverb and actual love songs — music videos from the album like “Good Fortune” showed Harvey looking more glamorous, confidently strutting around New York City. Let England Shake is the synthesis of these two extremes: it has a graceful, beautiful folk sound, but the lyrics and themes are ugly, violent, and ambiguous, much in the way her early music was. This is why Let England Shake often feels to me like a culmination of all her previous work, and proof that while she sounds different, her music still hits incredibly hard.

The same year Let England Shake came out, I ended up taking an English course in War literature. My final paper for the class was about Slaughterhouse-Five and used one of my favorite quotes from the novel: when Kurt Vonnegut says he is writing an anti-war novel, a filmmaker replies “Why don’t you write an anti-glacier book instead?” The strength of that book and Let England Shake is that they don’t fall into the trap of merely being anti-war and thus anti-glaciers. Instead, they study the impact it has on the people who lived it and those who came after. I try not to say albums are “literary” since they’re their own thing, but Let England Shake has a level of nuance and depth that is exceedingly rare in music, and it holds up even when compared to authentic war literature. I consider it to be the most impressive musical accomplishment of the last several years, and one that I think is legitimately important to listen to.

The Fantasy Worlds of Mary Timony

Last week I went to a live show by myself for the first time to see Ex Hex, Mary Timony’s latest band whose first album, Rips, was my favorite of last year. I don’t really love shows for a lot of reasons, so if I ever go to one, it’s a fairly ringing endorsement of the people involved. In this case, Timony has been one of my favorite artists for years, and it was worth putting up with all the dumb parts of live shows to see Ex Hex’s set.

Timony is having a bit of a resurgence in popularity lately, first as a member of Wild Flag who released one great album in 2011, and now as a member of Ex Hex, who played to a packed house on a Monday night. This comes about 20 years after her initial peak as frontwoman of Helium. Timony initially made a name for herself in that band playing the kind of noisy, guitar-driven indie rock that was common at the time, but she separated herself from the pack with her dark feminist-leaning lyrics and imagery, which was showcased in music videos for songs like “XXX” from 1994’s Pirate Prude EP and “Pat’s Trick” from 1995’s The Dirt of Luck.

Those early Helium albums hold up as some of the best rock music of that era, but Timony’s career gets more interesting after them. In 1997, the band moved in a different direction with the No Guitars EP, which fused Timony’s love of progressive rock and fantasy with their indie rock sound. They expanded on this later that year with The Magic City, a semi-concept album with a medieval fantasy theme and lyrics about dragons, space, and various other celestial topics.

The Magic City has consistently ranked among my favorite albums, and one that always makes me get on my soapbox, since I think it’s so woefully underappreciated. I remember it being one of the first albums that really showed me the power music could have as a form of escape: Timony crafted a complete world of her own, and when I listened to The Magic City, I felt like I was there. It has this mystical, strange, dark feeling I’ve never really heard in other music, while also still functioning as a rock album with real song-craft.

But while they were well-reviewed at the time, No Guitars and The Magic City have mostly fallen by the wayside, even among the relatively small niche of people who are still discussing Helium. When they are mentioned, it’s often just as a contrast to Helium’s earlier music: “their early stuff is great, but you can skip everything else.” And I think there is a general perception that Timony wasn’t playing to her strengths and indulging in random flights of fancy instead of making the music she was known for that people liked.

This criticism would dog her even more after Helium broke up and she continued to follow this fantasy theme on her first two solo albums, 2000’s Mountains and 2002’s The Golden Dove. While The Magic City had the medieval fantasy theme, parts of it still resembled music from a traditional guitar-driven rock band. When she went solo, Timony went even further away from her trademark guitar playing, instead often relying on piano and other unorthodox instrumentation, as well as singing with breathy and soft vocals compared to her more forceful Helium persona. The reaction to Mountains is perhaps best surmised by an old Pitchfork review, which gave it a 4.7 and at the end practically begged for Timony to get back to playing her guitar like she did with Helium. The Golden Dove didn’t seem to fare much better, and both these albums are virtually ignored now. Timony eventually returned to more traditional indie rock on 2005’s Ex Hex and now as a member of the band with the same name, playing the type of music most people want to hear.

I obviously am a big fan of Ex Hex, and it is fun to see Timony playing upbeat, happy music while being in the spotlight again. But there is a big place in my heart for this stretch of weird fantasy albums, which I think are total self-contained genius — moody, mysterious, fantastical, and truly individual. They fit into the traditional mold of fantasy literature, with songs steeped in metaphor as imaginary elements often stand in for real life struggles. At first, I found them difficult to listen to because they were so strange and challenging, but those traits are why I find myself coming back to them, since there is always something new to discover.

What I love most about these albums is how deeply uncool they are — few artists have spent this much energy pursuing such an obviously unmarketable vision. Progressive rock is often a punching bag for indie rock snobs, and the nerdy Dungeons-and-Dragonsy lyrics and references to animals like doves, cats, and horses made it pretty easy to dismiss her music in the way that old Pitchfork review did. But they are the albums Mary Timony wanted to make, and are an honest reflection of who she was at that time. Given Timony’s early success with Helium, there is something powerful and even inspiring about completely changing it up and making these albums, even at the obvious risk of losing her “cool factor” and alienating a reasonable chunk of her old fans. I’ll pretty much always have time for artists who really try to do something new with their music and don’t give a crap about all the other distractions.

This all gave me kind of a weird feeling when I went to the Ex Hex show — it was strange to see such a big crowd when I feel that Timony’s music has been criminally overlooked. And I couldn’t help but wonder how many people there had even heard Mountains or The Golden Dove (maybe I should have gone around and asked). Ex Hex put on a great show and are one of the best straight-forward rock bands out there right now, but I think Timony’s true legacy lies in these seldom-heard, strange fantasy albums — and the fact that she made them at all is why she will always be one of my favorite artists.

Old People Make Good Music Too

It’s no secret that music culture is obsessed with youth: blogs and review sites often center around “break-out” or “rising” artists and are usually targeting a young, often college-aged demographic of hip listeners. Music is often linked to image and coolness, and young people are decidedly better-looking and cooler than old people. This is accompanied by a similar mini-backlash against older artists, who are frequently dismissed as something like “dad rock” or have their current work ignored in favor of their classics from when they were the young people being covered by the press and listened to by the cool kids.

When I made my albums of the decade list a few weeks ago, I noticed that the top of the list was dominated by older, more experienced artists. PJ Harvey is 45, Fiona Apple is 37 and has been releasing music since she was 19, Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine is 52, Björk is 49, Kristin Hersh of Throwing Muses is 48, Kate Bush is 56, Mary Timony of Ex Hex and Wild Flag is 44. This wasn’t a conscious attempt to zig while everyone else zags — they were just the albums I liked the most from the last five years.

The common theme with all these artists is that they’ve been around for awhile. Most of them have released several albums worth of material, often fading in and out of popularity as they continued to follow their various muses. There is also a general perception with all of them that they’ve already “peaked” with albums they made when they were younger. Their albums on my list all were well-reviewed, but they weren’t appearing on the cover of magazines or whatever the equivalent of that is now in 2015. The statement my list ends up making (largely unintentionally) is that these artists still have something to say in their work, and it’s often overlooked in favor of less interesting bands that either drive more traffic to a website or can be built by whoever is hyping them.

A lot of this feeling comes from my own background as a self-proclaimed “wannabe writer.” At age 25 now, I’ve yet to feel like I have any sort of deep perspective or statement to make in anything I write, because I just haven’t lived enough — I’m still trying to figure everything out. When I write, it’s in an effort to improve my craft, and I feel with each essay or story (regardless of quality) I learn something and get better. I don’t think writing random blog posts is directly comparable to making music, but the general concept of honing the craft and constantly improving is something I think often holds.

Nearly all the albums at the top of my list had that feeling in them: they were works that the artists had been working towards for several years, and often synthesized elements of their earlier work in a satisfying way. Let England Shake tied together so much of PJ Harvey’s music, and felt like something only an experienced artist who knows exactly what she’s doing could make. The Idler Wheel… was Fiona Apple’s most confident album, a distillation of what has made her such a popular musician. M B V was the result of an over 20 year odyssey, and drew on both My Bloody Valentine’s past while also hinting at their potential future. I’ve written enough about Vulnicura, but it goes without saying that a much younger artist couldn’t have made an album that was drawing from years of love and heartbreak.

Purgatory/Paradise is an album that was almost entirely ignored, but was really ambitious, taking Throwing Muses’ classic sound, smashing it up, and re-imagining it. Kate Bush’s 50 Words for Snow had incredibly deep storytelling, and was a vastly uncool piano-based album with songs that stretched past 10 minutes in length. It was a real crafted work made by someone who takes their art seriously and is good at it. Maybe the most interesting example is Mary Timony/Ex Hex: it was my favorite album of 2014, in part because I felt it sounded young, even though Timony is in her mid-40s. It was an energetic, fun rock album, made by someone who simply knows how to write a great song, a case of an older artist beating the youngsters at their own game.

My appreciation for these albums is part of a type of fandom that I fear is getting less common, which is being a huge fan of an individual artist and following them on their journey from album to album. I always see their careers as being like a story, and albums like these as compelling chapters in them. As the internet bombards listeners with seemingly infinite music and new artists keep being recycled to feed the hype machine, this context starts to get lost — it stops being about the artists and starts being more about whatever sells day-to-day. Each album is just used to feed discussion for a day or a week (if it’s good) and then is forgotten about because something else comes along so quickly.

It is hard to make this sort of argument without sounding jaded at “the kids these days,” and taken too far it can get into the absurd Rolling Stone territory where dinosaur rockers consistently crap out “five star albums” into their 90s. But I can’t even count how many times I’ve seen a young band get talked up, only to instantly recognize that it has nearly nothing to do with the music — it’s either because they look like a cool band or they fit whatever story a site is trying to sell. They make the “albums of the year” list once, then are forgotten about two albums later, because some other young band has taken their place.

All of this has instilled me with a lot of skepticism for any young hyped-up band, and an appreciation for artists who have proven they make music that can endure. Youth is often exciting, but in terms of actual artistic statements or expression, it’s hard to buy that so many people my age are actually making worthwhile, memorable work. Sure, there’s prodigies like PJ Harvey, who made Rid of Me when she was 24, but that’s not normal. There’s something to be said for the artists who have been honing their craft for years or even decades, like PJ Harvey now, and are still creating music that has real thought and feeling in it.