First things first. In the podcast last week I’m pretty sure I mentioned my musical experiments, three of which I recently uploaded to SoundCloud. If you’re curious about it, here’s the link to my account there: http://soundcloud.com/capaneus. Two of these musical mutants are what I like to call dance poetry. This is more or less exactly what it sounds like, and if it offends you (really melodramatic poetry over house music? is this some kind of blasphemy?) please let me know so I can ignore you.
On the topic of music, I would like to mention one of this year’s albums that struck me as more or less blazingly awesome. It’s not necessarily my favorite album of this year, but it’s definitely up there. This came out in February, so I guess it’s kind of late to post this; at least it’s more recent. I’ve just had it on the brain recently and I figured I’d talk about it.
I’m talking about Let England Shake, by PJ Harvey.
This album took Great Britain’s Mercury Music Prize this year. I’ve got a friend who’s still whining that Everything Everything’s Man Alive deserved it more, and that PJ Harvey only wins these things because the panel loves her (she’s already won the Mercury once before). He’s totally wrong, by the way. I’ve listened to both albums and in my opinion there’s no contest.
Let England Shake is this magnificent concept album of war and humanity and time and England. Much of the instrumentals have got this weird, not-quite-in-tune sound or at least a lot of dissonant chords, and with Harvey’s voice way up in the stratosphere most of the time, the whole thing comes off as eerie, haunting, some other generic adjective that’s totally not going to convey what I want it to…. Music is always going to be hard to describe. And the strangeness of this album isn’t making it any easier on me. I don’t really know what else to say about it except that when I listened to it, it really hit home.
Make no mistake – I really like Everything Everything and Man Alive was also great, so go listen to that too. But it doesn’t come close to what Let England Shake manages to touch.
It’s hard to pick favorite songs off this album because they all work together so well. But here’s a couple to try:
“The Words that Maketh Murder”
Love these rhythms.
“On Battleship Hill”
Paroxysms of admiration on my part, here.
‘Til next time.
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