Editor’s Note: The Albumism staff has selected what we believe to be the 110 Best Albums of the 2010s, representing a varied cross-section of artists, genres, and styles. Click “Next Album” below to explore each album in the list or for easier navigation, view the full introduction & album index here.
PJ HARVEY | Let England Shake
Island (2011)
Selected by Justin Chadwick
“The west's asleep, let England shake / Weighted down with silent dead / I fear our blood won't rise again / Won't rise again,” PJ Harvey laments (or admonishes) in the opening lines of her eighth studio LP, confiding that “England, you leave a taste / A bitter one” later in the album. In light of the United Kingdom’s current clusterfuck of a geopolitical and nationalistic identity crisis, Harvey’s words have proven prescient indeed. Arguably the most fully realized reflection of her perennial defiance of musical convention (and our expectations of her), Let England Shake is her most sonically adventurous and expansive project within her prolific oeuvre to date. No great surprise, then, that ten years after she captured her first Mercury Prize win for 2001’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, she took home the award once again for Let England Shake.
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