PJ Harvey is one of the few rare rock artists who has continued to make music that rivals, if not far exceeds, the strength of their early career work. Her first two albums, Dry (1992) and Rid of Me (1993), showcased songs of unrestrained fury– raw and emotional songs build upon ferocious guitars, urgent bass lines and vicious drums. Her wails and shrieks both frightened and enticed listeners around the world, and soon Harvey was ubiquitous in the rock scene.
She then shifted her focus to musings on human desire and its many permutations on 1995’s To Bring You My Love and 1998’s Is This Desire?, two remarkably sensual records that still retained plenty of Harvey’s signature directness. She returned with the Mercury Prize-winning album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000), which introduced a fairly accessible production style to Harvey’s music and featured a high profile duet with Thom Yorke. 2004’s Uh Huh Her was a return back to the brazen guitar rock of her early career, but then everything changed in 2007 with the release of White Chalk. No one could have predicted Harvey’s veer away from the guitar, embracing instead an upright piano that often sounded slightly out of tune and thin. The radical shift in instruments wasn’t White Chalk’s only surprise– Harvey experimented with singing mostly in her higher register, creating an intensely eerie effect that was both unsettling and at times downright frightening. Still, White Chalk was a deeply affecting record that announced Harvey’s willingness to give up her trademark guitar to mine different artistic paths– a move whose rewards far outweighed the criticisms.
Let England Shake continues where White Chalk let off– not in sound but in aesthetic endeavor. It’s a daring step forward for Harvey. Dissenters may cite alienation as their key grievance for this new era in Harvey’s career, wishing for a return to the lower register singing and gripping guitar playing that characterized much of her 90’s work. In many ways, they’re not wrong to feel frustrated at Harvey’s new sound; however, reinvention is central to her artistic process, and to deny expansion is limiting and hampers potentially new avenues for Harvey’s self expression. She ultimately decided not to include the songs “Uh Huh Her” and “Evol” from 2004’s Uh Huh Her, because they sounded “too PJ Harvey,” a motion that indicates her refusal to repeat herself musically. Thus, it’s important to enter into any new PJ Harvey era with an open mind, because chances are she’s reinvented herself yet again. Under those less capable, this could be frustrating or downright disastrous. Harvey, on the other hand, continually raises the bar by releasing exceptional work, and Let England Shake is no different.
Calling in from her home in Dorset, Harvey spoke with Glide’s Peter Zimmerman regarding the process of writing Let England Shake. She shared many personal insights about the project, mused on the role of visual art in creating music, joked about a potential new album of saxophone solos and asserted her complete lack of interest in any sort of PJ Harvey retrospective.
“Let England Shake.” Let’s start with the title for your new album. Did it come from the song, or did the song come from a desire to explore the concept of your homeland? How did that come about?
It felt timely. I felt that I’d gotten to a point, as a writer, where I could try to address such things in language. I’d avoided dealing with huge subjects, like conflict and nation, before, because I didn’t feel I had the language with which to do that well. It’s something that I didn’t want to do badly, and I definitely reached a point in my life and in my writing life where I felt like I could have a go now. I work at my writing a lot– I work every day, and I try and get better all the time. I just felt like I could at least try. And particularly because of this point of time in history, I was feeling like I wanted to start addressing these things.
You mentioned about how important it was to get the words secure before even attempting the music. Was there something in the past few years that signaled to you that you were ready to take on this topic? Had your writing reached a point where you felt that it was time to shift? Or, was it something that you worked towards to shift yourself, to push yourself there?
I think it was more instinctively knowing that it was the right time. I’ve always been very affected by what is going on in the world– our world that we’re living in. The world around us. I’ve always been very affected emotionally by that. It seemed now that I had the language that I could try and describe those feelings a bit more. I realized just how much I am affected, and wanted to try and use my work, in some way, to begin to articulate some different ways of looking at things– to present some different perspectives.
You start out the album with the lyric “The West’s asleep / let England shake.” From the beginning it’s this sort of bugle call to signal that things are shifting and that things have shifted. You always try to reinvent yourself in many ways, so it’s been fascinating getting to read the lyrics to this album. I was wondering, however, in your process if you reached a lot of writer’s block, since it is such a different vernacular.
It’s been a very long process. I wrote the words exclusively for about two and a half years. I just worked on words and nothing else. And not just the words that ended up on the album, but many, many different ways of writing. During that period of time, I asked for feedback from a couple of people who are also writers and whose opinion I trusted. Again, I felt that I needed that, because I didn’t want to tip into the self-righteous– I think it’s a trap I could have fallen into. I didn’t particularly want to put across opinions, but really just present the facts. I knew what I wanted to avoid, but I wasn’t quite sure what I was trying to find.
In the end, it evolved into just describing the action– “this is how it is.” I asked myself often whether there was such a thing as a correspondent in song, as in a journalist, war correspondent or photojournalist bringing back the news from the frontline. If there was such a thing in song, how might that be done?
It appears you had a few guiding principles, at least in terms of evaluating the process throughout. Was that an organic evolution in the project, or did you approach writing this album with the idea of the inhabiting the photojournalist in song?
I had that in the forefront of my mind, because I wanted to write with impartiality and just give the news. So I kept that idea of being a song correspondent in mind– but also one that was unbiased. I also tried to look at things from lots of angles and perspectives, so I could keep a sense of openness about the ways in which the lyrics could be interpreted.
You speak of Let England Shake as being so “timely,” yet there are so many references that reach far back into history, and so, in a way, the album becomes timeless. Also, the choices with sampling and talking about war from different time periods gives it this ambiguous quality. Was that something you were looking for?
Yeah, most definitely. That was one of the things at the forefront of my mind, actually. I wanted to create a timelessness, that this could be anyplace, anytime– anywhere, really. But, I did find myself wanting to take certain historical reference points to show the cycle of human nature– and nature– as well as how history does repeat itself.
The lyrics on Let England Shake seem very visually focused. They’re these gripping tableaus of violence and mayhem. And then there’s the twelve videos done by Seamus Murphy to accompany each song. You’ve spoken about writers and folk music traditions that impacted you in making this album. Were there any visual artists that inspired you in this process?
There absolutely were. I looked a lot at Goya’s “Disasters of War,” as well as his Black paintings, which I think are incredible. I also looked at Salvador Dali a lot, especially the “Spanish Civil War” era.
You also classify yourself as a visual artist. Did you find yourself making a lot of art when writing Let England Shake?
Absolutely. I was working mostly with charcoal as I was making this record. I’ve moved more into painting now– I’ve been painting all the time. Whatever I’m working on with my drawing and painting, it does tend to have a rhythm with what I’m writing at the time, and often when I’m working on one, it’ll solve a problem in another. If I were to get stuck on a piece I was working on, or a verse, I might spend some time painting, and then it would solve itself somehow.
In talking about imagery, I often can see what I’m trying to write before I write it, and then by looking at the image I have in my mind, I can write the piece. So, they do really go hand-in-hand. I find it’s often like that with creating sound with instruments. I can “see” the sound I want to create. It’s very much like working with colors or manipulating materials.
Is that something you’ve cultivated throughout your career, or is this something you’ve specifically worked toward recently?
I think it’s always been the case with me, because I came from a visual arts background. I was at art college when I started writing music and putting my own band together, so it’s been very natural for me to think about using artistic materials that I was already using during the day, and then I’d be playing music in the evenings.
One thing that I find so compelling about this album is the juxtaposition of music and lyrics. The music is, in many ways, quite upbeat, but it’s then mixed with lyrics that are so graphic and visual, and seem so different from the feel of the music. Was that a conscious choice?
That was very much a conscious choice, because the words already had a lot of weight to them, and I didn’t want to weight them down any further. I knew that I wanted the music to be of great energy and spirit, and actually give a sense of uplift for the words, but also for the people hearing them and for the singing of those words. I wanted it to be a feeling of community and spirit. I wanted a lot of voices to sing those words with me.
When I’d written the words, I spent a long time just singing them. I sang the words without touching an instrument, just to find their melody. The words inherently had their own rhythm, but I had to find the melody for them. By singing the words alone, I found I was coming up with very simple melodies, which in turn really stick with you because they are so simple.
With Let England Shake, you’re twenty years into your career and you’re releasing an album that, in my mind, totally changes the ballgame of what it means to be a PJ Harvey album. But, that’s not really much different than White Chalk, or really any of the albums that preceded this one. Do you ever go back to those previous albums and revisit them? Do you draw strength from them, or do you mostly push forward?
I hardly ever listen to past work, because really I don’t feel the need to. It’s inherently in me, anyway. I’ve learnt from all of them– they are all valid– but I’m always most interested and most excited about where I am right now. Today, I’m excited about the words I was writing this morning, which have moved on again from this record. That’s always where I am, and that’s where I need to be. That’s what life is like, though. You take one moment at a time– that’s all you can do.
You’ve never released a “Greatest Hits” or “Best Of” package. Is there a reason you haven’t done a retrospective like that, considering how large your catalog is?
I’ve never felt the desire to do that, partly because I feel like I’ve only just begun! I don’t feel like I’m in any shape or form to do a sort of retrospective. I think I’ll leave that for people to do after I’m dead and gone. (laugh)
You performed a concert at the Dorset church where you recorded Let England Shake a month ago to preview the album, and you played a considerable number of songs from Is This Desire? among the new ones. Do you see a specific kinship between these two albums?
There are a lot of songs on Is This Desire? (and actually also on To Bring You My Love) that I really, really like, and that I truly enjoy playing still. They still feel very close to me. But mostly it was to do with the narrative– I needed to find songs whose narrative worked with that of the new record. They needed to have some thread running through them that could link them all.
I’m certainly excited to see these new songs live. You recently confirmed you would be playing Coachella in April. Are you planning a North American tour in this spring?
We’re definitely going to be playing in San Francisco and New York, as well as Coachella.
Are you working on anything in particular for this show? Are you going to be playing saxophone on the road?
We’re going to be playing these songs throughout this year. It’ll be with a three-piece band and myself, and I’ll be playing a lot of instruments– guitar and autoharp, mostly. I’d love to play the saxophone, but of course I can’t play it and sing at the same time (laugh)– that’s a bit tricky! I don’t think I’ll be bringing the saxophone on this tour, sadly. I’ll have to write a few more songs where there’s room for saxophone solos, so I can sing and play! (laugh)
Let England Shake is released in the US on February 15 through Vagrant Records. More information on PJ Harvey, pre-ordering the new album and her upcoming North American tour can be found at www.pjharvey.net
