The Winner Takes It All
It’s a while since an album deserved the Mercury Music Prize as much as PJ Harvey’s Let England Shake. This record is huge – dramatic, atmospheric, poetic and packed with stories. My favourite is told from the perspective of a soldier who has faced the many atrocities of war, “seen and done things I want to forget”, with nowhere left to turn. There’s a bitter irony to his final refrain (knowingly stolen from Eddie Cochran’s far cheerier ‘Summertime Blues’)…
“What if I take my problems to the United Nations…?”
Forget the Mercury, this song walks away with “Rhetorical Question of the Year” too.
A New England
Wow. Had no idea PJ was still going. That’s heartening to hear in itself.
This is my favourite track on the album, too – and it’s a great album.