PJ Harvey - "iTunes Session" CD Review

Earlier this month, PJ Harvey became the first person to win the UK’s Mercury Music Prize twice. Harvey previously won the award in 2001 for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea and this second award was for her eighth studio album, Let England Shake, which was released earlier this year.

PJ Harvey is releasing an exclusive iTunes Session on Monday, September 13th that features seven recently recorded live tracks along with a twenty-four minute interview with Harvey where she discusses her musical background, song writing process and how her collaboration with Seamus Murphy evolved. The Session includes four songs from Let England Shake (Vagrant/Island), as well as "Angelene" from 1998's Is This Desire?, and "C'mon Billy" and "Down by the Water" from 1995's To Bring You My Love.

iTunes Session track listing:
1. “Let England Shake”
2. “The Words That Maketh Murder”
3. “The Last Living Rose”
4. “Written On The Forehead”
5. “Angelene”
6. “C’Mon Billy”
7. “Down By The Water”
8 – Interview -

After winning the Mercury Music Prize, Harvey said: “I feel surprised and astonished that I’ve won twice and I do feel proud, it’s amazing, I can’t quite take it in but at the same time I feel that making music and words is very important to me and I’ve always tried to make it the best it could possibly be and I hope to continue doing that. I hope to be back here again in another 10 years’ time with another record because it’s very important to me to keep making word that is of relevance, not just to myself but to other people.”

Below is PJ Harvey's performance of "The Words That Maketh Murder" from the Mercury Music Prize Ceremony along a live audience video from Harvey’s show at Terminal 5 earlier this year of “Let England Shake”.





PJ Harvey Tour Dates:
Oct 21 – Stockholm, Sweden @ Filadelfiakyrkan
Oct 22 – Stockholm, Sweden @ Filadelfiakyrkan
Oct 24 – Oslo, Norway @ Sentrum Scene
Oct 25 – Oslo, Norway @ Sentrum Scene
Oct 27 – Prague, Czech Republic @ Lucerna Hall
Oct 30 – London, UK @ Royal Albert Hall
Oct 31 – London, UK @ Royal Albert Hall

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PJ Harvey: Live Webcast from Paris Broadcast Monday, Feb. 14 at 3PM (EST)

PJ Harvey - The Words That Maketh Murder by VagrantRecords

To mark the release of Let England Shake, PJ Harvey will debut her new album live in a one-off, special show from Paris on Monday February 14th. The show will be streamed live on Monday at 3pm EST / 12pm PST (8pm GMT) by the French music site Deezer and the cultural chanel ARTE. The webcast will also be available on the official PJ Harvey site.

PJ Harvey’s eighth album, Let England Shake, comes out on Tuesday, Feb. 15 and this new album was recorded in a 19th Century church in Dorset, on a cliff-top overlooking the sea. It was created with a cast of musicians including such long-standing allies as Flood, John Parish, and Mick Harvey.

What is remarkable about Let England Shake is bound up with its music, its abiding atmosphere – and in particular, its words. If Harvey’s past work might seem to draw on direct emotional experience, this new album is rather different. Its songs centre on both her home country, and events further afield in which it has embroiled itself. The lyrics return, time and again, to the matter of war, the fate of the people who must do the fighting, and events separated by whole ages, from Afghanistan to Gallipoli. The album they make up is not a work of protest, nor of strait-laced social or political comment. It brims with the mystery and magnetism in which she excels. But her lyric-writing in particular has arrived at a new, breathtaking place, in which the human aspects of history are pushed to the foreground. Put simply, not many people make records like this.



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PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey Releases "Let England Shake" on Feb. 15 // Show at Terminal 5 on April 20th

Written On The Forehead by pjharvey

PJ Harvey's eighth disc Let England Shake comes out next Tuesday (Feb. 15th) on Vagrant Records and she is playing a limited run of headlining shows in April.

PJ Harvey’s new album was recorded in a 19th Century church in Dorset, on a cliff-top overlooking the sea. It was created with a cast of musicians including such long-standing allies as Flood, John Parish, and Mick Harvey.

What is remarkable about Let England Shake is bound up with its music, its abiding atmosphere – and in particular, its words. If Harvey’s past work might seem to draw on direct emotional experience, this new album is rather different. Its songs centre on both her home country, and events further afield in which it has embroiled itself. The lyrics return, time and again, to the matter of war, the fate of the people who must do the fighting, and events separated by whole ages, from Afghanistan to Gallipoli. The album they make up is not a work of protest, nor of strait-laced social or political comment. It brims with the mystery and magnetism in which she excels. But her lyric-writing in particular has arrived at a new, breathtaking place, in which the human aspects of history are pushed to the foreground. Put simply, not many people make records like this.

“I was looking outwards a lot more,” she told the BBC’s Andrew Marr, when she appeared on his programme back in May. “I think a lot of my work has often been about the interior, the emotional, what happens inside oneself. And this time I’ve been just looking out, so it’s not only to do with taking a look at England but taking a look at the world and what happening in current world affairs. But always trying to come from the human point of view, because I don’t feel qualified to sing from a political standpoint… I sing as a human being affected by the politics, and that for me is a more successful way … because I so often feel that with a lot of protest music, I’m being preached to, and I don’t want that”.

The show at Terminal 5 is sold out but I'd watch for last minute (DOS) to go on-sale.

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PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey Releases Video for "The Last Living Rose" from Upcoming Album "Let England Shake" (Vagrant)

Written On The Forehead by pjharvey

PJ Harvey has just released "The Last Living Rose" off of her upcoming album Let England Shake (available Feb 15 on Vagrant Records). The video was directed by the award-winning photographer Seamus Murphy who has directed series of videos to accompany all 12 songs on Let England Shake. The twelve videos feature still and moving images from a 5,000 mile road-trip Murphy undertook around England. He has worked similarly with still photography on journeys through America and Russia.

Inspired and developed from themes in Harvey’s new album, the films were made in the manner of classic photographic reportage - recording real & spontaneous situations. They make up a visual diary of Murphy’s journey, travelling light and alone, and his attempt to document England and the English. Murphy has mixed his observations on England with images from his work in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East - places Polly refers to in her depiction of England. The film soundtrack, the studio recording of the album Let England Shake, is mixed at times with footage and audio Murphy captured of Harvey in rehearsal and in performance. In addition some of the album lyrics were given a voice by people he encountered on his journey.



"The Last Living Rose" Lyrics

Goddam' Europeans!
Take me back to England
& the grey, damp filthiness of ages,
fog rolling down behind the mountains,
& on the graveyards, and dead sea-captains.

Let me walk through the stinking alleys
to the music of drunken beatings,
past the Thames River, glistening like gold
hastily sold for nothing.

Let me watch night fall on the river,
the moon rise up and turn to silver,
the sky move,
the ocean shimmer,
the hedge shake,
the last living rose quiver.

PJ Harvey - Vocals, Guitar, Saxophone
John Parish - Drums, Guitar, Trombone, Vocals
Mick Harvey - Drums, Organ, Vocals

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PJ Harvey