''Let England Shake'' is the eighth studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey (born 9 October 1969) is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments.
Harvey began her career in 1988 when she joined loca ...
, released on 14 February 2011 by
Island Records
Island Records is a multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded in 1959 by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall, and Leslie Kong in Jamaica, and was eventually sold to PolyGram in 1989. Island and A&M Records, anoth ...
. Production began around the time of ''
White Chalk
''White Chalk'' is the seventh studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey, released on 24 September 2007 on Island Records.
Work on the album started in 2006, with producer Flood and John Parish, who also worked on her '' ...
''s release in 2007, though it is a departure from the piano-driven introspection of that album. ''Let England Shake'' was written over a -year period, and recorded in five weeks at a church in
Dorset
Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset (unitary authority), Dors ...
during April and May 2010.
Upon release, the album received numerous accolades. It was placed 2011 "Album of the Year" by 16 publications
and in September 2011 won the coveted
Mercury Prize
The Mercury Prize, formerly called the Mercury Music Prize, is an annual music prize awarded for the best album released in the United Kingdom by a British or Irish act. It was created by Jon Webster and Robert Chandler in association with the B ...
. It was PJ Harvey's fourth nomination overall (including 2001's winner ''
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea''), making her the most successful artist in the prize's history. The album also won the Uncut Music Award in November 2011, as well as Album of the Year in the 2012
Ivor Novello Awards
The Ivor Novello Awards, named after the entertainer Ivor Novello, are awards for songwriting and composing. They have been presented annually in London by the Ivors Academy (formerly the BASCA) since 1956, and over 1,000 statuettes have been a ...
.
Background and development
Harvey began writing lyrics for the album before setting the words to music. She has cited the poetry of
Harold Pinter
Harold Pinter (; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a British playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. A Nobel Prize winner, Pinter was one of the most influential modern British dramatists with a writing career that spanne ...
and
T.S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National B ...
as influences, as well as the artwork of
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...
and
Francisco de Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and e ...
, the music of
The Doors
The Doors were an American Rock music, rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1965, with vocalist Jim Morrison, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, guitarist Robby Krieger, and drummer John Densmore. They were among the most controversial and influential ro ...
,
The Pogues
The Pogues were an English or Anglo-Irish Celtic punk band fronted by Shane MacGowan and others, founded in Kings Cross, London in 1982, as "Pogue Mahone" – the anglicisation of the Irish Gaelic ''póg mo thóin'', meaning "kiss my arse". T ...
, and
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City in 1964. The original line-up consisted of singer/guitarist Lou Reed, multi-instrumentalist John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Angus MacLise. MacLise w ...
and the films of
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...
,
Ken Loach
Kenneth Charles Loach (born 17 June 1936) is a British film director and screenwriter. His socially critical directing style and socialist ideals are evident in his film treatment of social issues such as poverty (''Poor Cow'', 1967), homelessne ...
and
Ari Folman
Ari Folman ( he, ארי פולמן) (born December 17, 1962) is an Israeli film director, screenwriter, animator, and film-score composer. He directed the Oscar-nominated animated documentary film ''Waltz with Bashir'' (2008) and the live-ac ...
.
She has also spoken of researching the history of conflict, including the
Gallipoli Campaign, and reading modern-day testimonies from civilians and soldiers in
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to Iraq–Turkey border, the north, Iran to Iran–Iraq ...
and
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
.
During some solo shows some years prior to working on this album, Harvey had begun playing the
autoharp
An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. The term ''autoharp'' was once a trademark of ...
. She told local newspaper ''Bridport News'' in 2011: "I was really enjoying this different, enormous, wide breadth of sound that the autoharp gives. It's quite a delicate sound, but it's also like having an entire orchestra at your fingertips. I began by writing quite a lot on the autoharp, and then slowly as time went by, (because this album was written over two and a half years)… my writing started moving into experimenting with different guitars, and using different sound applications, ones that I had never really experimented with."
On the subject of a new vocal style for the album, Harvey commented that "I couldn't sing
he songs
He or HE may refer to:
Language
* He (pronoun), an English pronoun
* He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ
* He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets
* He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...
in a rich strong mature voice without it sounding completely wrong. So I had to slowly find the voice, and this voice started to develop, almost taking on the role of a narrator."
Recording
Harvey told
Spinner Technology
*Spinner (aeronautics), the aerodynamic cone at the hub of an aircraft propeller
* Spinner (cell culture), laboratory equipment for cultivating plant or mammalian cells
* Spinner (computing), a graphical widget in a GUI
* Spinner (MIT Med ...
in March 2009 that she had recorded demos for the album and planned to record in early 2010, commenting: "All I can say is that I am pleased with it, because I feel it's a grand departure from anything
've donebefore. If I've done that, then for me, it's worked. I'm already feeling like I did, and I'm happy. I'm very pleased because I'm not repeating myself."
After initially searching for recording studios in Berlin in mid-2009 while touring ''
A Woman a Man Walked By'' with
John Parish
John Parish (born 11 April 1959) is an English musician, songwriter, composer and record producer.
Parish is best known for his work with singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. He has also worked with such artists as Eels, Aldous Harding, Tracy Chapm ...
, Harvey instead opted to record at
St. Peter's Church,
Eype
Eype ( ) is a small village in southwest Dorset, England, situated southwest of Bridport. It lies on the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site on the English Channel and is within the civil parish of Symondsbury.
Eype means "steep place". Many of t ...
, near
Bridport
Bridport is a market town in Dorset, England, inland from the English Channel near the confluence of the River Brit and its tributary the Asker. Its origins are Saxon and it has a long history as a rope-making centre. On the coast and wit ...
in Dorset.
She told ''Bridport News'': "I remembered that the man who now runs this church as an arts venue had said to me a few times if I'd ever wanted to use it for a show or rehearsals that he'd love that, and that's when I approached him and asked if we could use it."
The album was recorded in the church in a five-week period in April and May 2010
with long-time collaborators John Parish and
Mick Harvey
Michael John Harvey (born 29 August 1958) is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, arranger and record producer. A multi-instrumentalist, he is best known for his long-term collaborations with Nick Cave, with whom he formed The ...
, and with both co-producing along with
Flood
A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...
; drummer Jean-Marc Butty added parts at a later stage. Much of the record was recorded live,
and Harvey has described the recording as reasonably improvisational, commenting: "I wanted to leave room for them so they could bring their feelings into it as well. Usually I would have planned everything and known what instrumentation I wanted. This time I demoed the songs mostly with one or two instruments with a voice and that was as much as I had. So I basically had the chords and a couple of saxophone melodies, a couple of voice melodies and that was what I took with me to the church. We rehearsed the songs as if we were rehearsing to play them live and found quite quickly that we had only rehearsed a song through maybe twice and Flood had started recording us."
The sessions were recorded by engineer Rob Kirwan.
The album features Harvey's first on-record use of the saxophone.
Release
Preceding the album release, the first single, "
The Words That Maketh Murder
"The Words That Maketh Murder" is a song by English musician PJ Harvey. It is the fourth track and lead single from her eighth studio album, '' Let England Shake'', and was released on 6 February 2011 on Island Records. Dealing with diplomacy ...
", was released by
Island Records
Island Records is a multinational record label owned by Universal Music Group. It was founded in 1959 by Chris Blackwell, Graeme Goodall, and Leslie Kong in Jamaica, and was eventually sold to PolyGram in 1989. Island and A&M Records, anoth ...
on 17 January 2011 digitally and 7 February 2011 on vinyl (together with the non-album track "The Guns Called Me Back Again" from the album recording session). The album followed on 14 February 2011 (Europe, rest of the world) and on 15 February (Canada, US). As Island Records released the album in Europe, Canada and rest of the world, it was released by
Vagrant Records
Vagrant Records is an American record label based in California. It was founded in 1995 by Rich Egan and Jon Cohen. The label focuses on rock, but features artists in a variety of other genres including folk, soul, electronic, and pop. It is hom ...
in US. It is available as
Digital Download on several platforms, CD and
LP.
In December 2021 Polly Jean Harvey announced a vinyl reissue of the album for January 28, 2022, alongside a companion disc of demos for the album.
Films
After seeing Seamus Murphy's "A Darkness Visible" exhibition in London in 2008, Harvey contacted Murphy as she "wanted to speak to him more about his experiences being there in Afghanistan".
The collaboration grew, with Murphy taking promotional photographs in July 2010 before filming accompanying videos for each song on the album which were completed in January 2011. On 14–17 July 2011 the 12 films (as whole or individually) are screened for the first time at several UK festivals.
On 12 December 2011, Murphy's short films were released on DVD as ''Let England Shake: 12 Short Films by Seamus Murphy''.
Tour and live performances
![PJ Harvey and band 31 Oct 2011](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/PJ_Harvey_and_band_31_Oct_2011.jpg)
Two of the album's tracks made their debut at the
Bestival
Bestival was a four-day music festival held in the south of England. It had been held annually in the late summer since 2004 at Robin Hill on the Isle of Wight. In 2017 the festival relocated to the Lulworth Estate in Dorset. The event was organ ...
music festival in July 2009, in Harvey's only live performance of the year. In April 2010, around the time of the album recording, Harvey appeared on
BBC One
BBC One is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's flagship network and is known for broadcasting mainstream programming, which includes BBC News television bulletins, p ...
's ''
The Andrew Marr Show
''The Andrew Marr Show'' is a Sunday morning talk show presented by Andrew Marr. It was broadcast on BBC One from 2005 to 2021.
The programme replaced the long-running '' Breakfast with Frost'' as the network's flagship Sunday talk show when D ...
'' for an interview and performance of "Let England Shake",
in front of then-Prime Minister
Gordon Brown
James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He previously served as Chance ...
.
Harvey previewed the album with a show at the St. Peter's Church,
Eype
Eype ( ) is a small village in southwest Dorset, England, situated southwest of Bridport. It lies on the Jurassic Coast World Heritage Site on the English Channel and is within the civil parish of Symondsbury.
Eype means "steep place". Many of t ...
, Dorset (where the album was recorded) on 18 December 2010, performing songs from the new album as well as songs from her back catalogue.
A European tour took place in February 2011, with a US leg in April, and festivals scheduled in the summer. A live performance in "La Maroquinerie" in Paris on 14 February 2011 was streamed as live
webcast
A webcast is a media presentation distributed over the Internet using streaming media technology to distribute a single content source to many simultaneous listeners/viewers. A webcast may either be distributed live or on demand. Essentially, web ...
by
Deezer
Deezer is a French online music streaming service. It allows users to listen to music content from record labels, as well as podcasts on various devices online or offline.
Created in Paris, Deezer currently has 90 million licensed tracks in i ...
and also by
Arte
Arte (; (), sometimes stylized in lowercase or uppercase in its logo) is a European public service channel dedicated to culture.
It is made up of three separate companies: the Strasbourg-based European Economic Interest Grouping ARTE, plus ...
. On 12 July 2011 Arte broadcast on television a 73 min recording of a February 2011 live performance in
Paris Olympia
The Olympia (; commonly known as L'Olympia or in the English-speaking world as Olympia Hall) is a concert venue in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, France, located at 28 Boulevard des Capucines, equally distancing Madeleine church and Opéra G ...
. Selected live performance dates to promote the album (not complete):
Critical reception
''Let England Shake'' received widespread critical acclaim upon its release. At
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 86, based on 42 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim."
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databas ...
reviewer Heather Phares referred to the album as "a set of songs strikingly different from what came before" and added that "its complexities make it one of Harvey's most cleverly crafted works."
Praising it as Harvey's "most affecting and impressive work so far", Mike Williams of ''
NME
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...
'' wrote: "
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola (; ; born April 7, 1939) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the major figures of the New Hollywood filmmaking movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Coppola is the recipient of five A ...
can lay claim to the war movie.
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...
the war novel. Polly Jean Harvey, a 41-year-old from Dorset, has claimed the war album."
Peter Paphides
Peter Paphides (born 1969 as Panayiotakis Paphides or Panayiotis Paphides) is a British journalist and broadcaster.
Early life
Paphides was born in Birmingham to a Greek Cypriot father, Chris, and a Greek mother, Victoria. He has an elder broth ...
of ''
Mojo
Mojo may refer to:
* Mojo (African-American culture), a magical charm bag used in voodoo
Arts, entertainment and media Film and television
* MOJO HD, an American television network
* ''Mojo'' (play), by Jez Butterworth, made into a 1997 film
* ' ...
'' called ''Let England Shake'' an "uncannily timely piece of work," with Harvey at "her most powerful." ''
Q''s Victoria Segal praised the album's "remarkable lyrics" and "ethereal music," awarding the album a full five-star review,
and ''
Uncut
Uncut may refer to:
* ''Uncut'' (film), a 1997 Canadian docudrama film by John Greyson about censorship
* ''Uncut'' (magazine), a monthly British magazine with a focus on music, which began publishing in May 1997
* '' BET: Uncut'', a Black Enter ...
'' reviewer Andrew Mueller designated ''Let England Shake'' as the magazine's Album of the Month, calling it "the sound of someone as maddened as they are enthralled, aglow with anger and passion."
Alexis Petridis of ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'' described ''Let England Shake'' as "a richly inventive album that's unlike anything else in Harvey's back catalogue" and referred to Harvey as being "at her creative peak."
In ''
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was fo ...
'',
Neil McCormick
Neil McCormick (born 31 March 1961) is a British music journalist, author and broadcaster. He has been Chief Music Critic for ''The Daily Telegraph'' since 1996, and presented a music interview show for Vintage TV in the UK, Neil McCormick's Nee ...
called it an "extraordinary album" and "a profound and serious work from a singer-songwriter at the height of her powers, a meditation on mankind's apparently endless appetite for self-destruction"
and in ''
The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
'', Andy Gill stated that it "may be her best album," described it as "a portrait of her homeland as a country built on bloodshed and battle".
Amanda Petrusich
Amanda Petrusich (born c. 1980) is an American music journalist. She is a staff writer at ''The New Yorker'' and the author of three books: ''Pink Moon'' (2007), '' It Still Moves: Lost Songs, Lost Highways, and the Search for the Next American M ...
, in her review for ''
Spin'', praised the album's "bloody and forceful" sound,
and Jesse Cataldo of ''
Slant Magazine
''Slant Magazine'' is an American online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York ...
'' said that ''Let England Shake'' creates a "matchless musical world where Harvey reigns with autonomy".
''
Pitchfork
A pitchfork (also a hay fork) is an agricultural tool with a long handle and two to five tines used to lift and pitch or throw loose material, such as hay, straw, manure, or leaves.
The term is also applied colloquially, but inaccurately, to th ...
'' editor Scott Plagenhoef noted that "it's universal and it's necessary-- and it's powerfully and clearly stated", giving the album a "Best New Music" designation.
Robert Christgau
Robert Thomas Christgau ( ; born April 18, 1942) is an American music journalist and essayist. Among the most well-known and influential music critics, he began his career in the late 1960s as one of the earliest professional rock critics and ...
, writing in ''
MSN Music
''MSN Music'' was a part of MSN's web services. It delivered music news, music videos, spotlights on new music, artist information, and live performances of artists. The website also served as a digital music store from 2004 to 2008.
History
I ...
'', called the album "a suite of well-turned if unnecessarily understated
antiwar songs" and compared Harvey's "evolution" to that of
Annie Haslam
Annie Haslam (born 8 June 1947) is an English vocalist, songwriter and painter. She is best known as the lead singer of progressive rock band Renaissance since 1971, and for her long and diverse solo singing career. She has a five-octave vocal r ...
.
''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first kno ...
'' gave the album a mixed review and a three-star rating.
Stuart Maconie
Stuart Maconie (born 13 August 1961) is an English radio DJ and television presenter, writer, journalist, and critic working in the field of pop music and popular culture. He is currently a presenter on BBC Radio 6 Music where, alongside Mark ...
wrote in ''
Radio Times
''Radio Times'' (currently styled as ''RadioTimes'') is a British weekly listings magazine devoted to television and radio programme schedules, with other features such as interviews, film reviews and lifestyle items. Founded in May 1923 by J ...
'' that "all her records have been interesting and singular, but for me none had the sheer, visceral, otherly power" of ''Let England Shake''.
The album was also included in the book ''
1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
''1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die'' is a musical reference book first published in 2005 by Universe Publishing. Part of the ''1001 Before You Die'' series, it compiles writings and information on albums chosen by a panel of music critics ...
''.
Accolades
Commercial performance
''Let England Shake'' entered the
UK Albums Chart
The Official Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales and (from March 2015) audio streaming in the United Kingdom. It was published for the first time on 22 July 1956 and is compiled every week by the Official Charts C ...
at number 8 with first-week sales of 22,468.
These sales were an improvement on the estimated 14,000 copies of her previous album ''
White Chalk
''White Chalk'' is the seventh studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey, released on 24 September 2007 on Island Records.
Work on the album started in 2006, with producer Flood and John Parish, who also worked on her '' ...
''s first-week sales. ''Let England Shake'' was also Harvey's second album to reach the Top 10, and the first in eighteen years, since ''
Rid of Me
''Rid of Me'' is the second studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey. It was released by Island Records in May 1993, approximately one year after the release of her critically acclaimed debut album '' Dry''. It marked a ...
'' peaked at number 3 in May 1993. The album also entered the
''Billboard'' 200 in the United States at number 32 with sales of around 18,000 copies.
Following its win of the Mercury Prize in September 2011, ''Let England Shake'' re-entered the UK Albums Chart at number 24. Sales of the album increased by 1,100% following the awards ceremony and it was subsequently certified Gold in the United Kingdom for shipment of over 100,000 units. The album was also later certified Gold in Denmark after sales of more than 10,000 copies. The album had sold approximately 130,000 copies in the United Kingdom as of December 2011, and 86,000 copies in the United States as of March 2016.
As of September 2017 it had sold 173,000 copies in United Kingdom.
Track listing
;
iTunes
iTunes () is a software program that acts as a media player, media library, mobile device management utility, and the client app for the iTunes Store. Developed by Apple Inc., it is used to purchase, play, download, and organize digital mul ...
pre-order bonus track
;iTunes
bonus material
Personnel
Musicians
*
PJ Harvey
Polly Jean Harvey (born 9 October 1969) is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. Primarily known as a vocalist and guitarist, she is also proficient with a wide range of instruments.
Harvey began her career in 1988 when she joined loca ...
– vocals, guitar
(2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12),
autoharp
An autoharp or chord zither is a string instrument belonging to the zither family. It uses a series of bars individually configured to mute all strings other than those needed for the intended chord. The term ''autoharp'' was once a trademark of ...
(1, 4, 5, 12), saxophone
(1, 2, 4, 5, 8),
zither
Zithers (; , from the Greek word ''cithara'') are a class of stringed instruments. Historically, the name has been applied to any instrument of the psaltery family, or to an instrument consisting of many strings stretched across a thin, flat bo ...
(6), violin
(7)
*
John Parish
John Parish (born 11 April 1959) is an English musician, songwriter, composer and record producer.
Parish is best known for his work with singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. He has also worked with such artists as Eels, Aldous Harding, Tracy Chapm ...
– guitar
(2–4, 6, 9, 10, 12), drums
(1, 2, 5, 7–9, 12), percussion
(3, 4, 6, 11),
trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the Standing wave, air column ...
(1, 2, 4, 5, 8),
rhodes
Rhodes (; el, Ρόδος , translit=Ródos ) is the largest and the historical capital of the Dodecanese islands of Greece. Administratively, the island forms a separate municipality within the Rhodes regional unit, which is part of the So ...
(1, 8, 11),
mellotron
The Mellotron is an electro-mechanical musical instrument developed in Birmingham, England, in 1963. It is played by pressing its keys, each of which pushes a length of magnetic tape against a capstan, which pulls it across a playback head. A ...
(1, 7, 12),
xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Like the glockenspiel (which uses metal bars), the xylophone essentially consists of a set of tuned wooden keys arranged in ...
(1), backing vocals
(2–6, 8, 9, 11, 12)
*
Mick Harvey
Michael John Harvey (born 29 August 1958) is an Australian musician, singer-songwriter, composer, arranger and record producer. A multi-instrumentalist, he is best known for his long-term collaborations with Nick Cave, with whom he formed The ...
– vocals
(12), guitar
(8, 9, 11), bass
(4), drums
(2, 4, 11), percussion
(4, 6, 11),
bass harmonica
The harmonica, also known as a French harp or mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used worldwide in many musical genres, notably in blues, American folk music, classical music, jazz, country, and rock. The many types of harmonica inclu ...
(1, 4, 5, 8, 9), piano
(1, 6, 10),
organ (2, 5, 7, 8), rhodes
(3, 6), xylophone
(9), backing vocals
(2–6, 8–12)
*Jean-Marc Butty – drums
(3, 6, 8, 10, 12), backing vocals
(3, 5, 6, 8)
Guest musicians
*Sammy Hurden – backing vocals
(8, 12)
*Greta Berlin – backing vocals
(8, 12)
*Lucy Roberts – backing vocals
(8, 12)
Technical
*
Flood
A flood is an overflow of water ( or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are an area of study of the discipline hydrol ...
– producer,
mixing
*Rob Kirwan –
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
,
recording
A record, recording or records may refer to:
An item or collection of data Computing
* Record (computer science), a data structure
** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity
** Boot sector or boot record, ...
*Stefano de Silva – mastering
*Catherine Marks – mixing assistant
*John Catlin – mixing assistant
*John Parish – additional producer
*Mick Harvey – additional producer
*PJ Harvey – additional producer
Design
*Rob Crane –
layout
Layout may refer to:
* Page layout, the arrangement of visual elements on a page
** Comprehensive layout (comp), a proposed page layout presented by a designer to their client
* Layout (computing), the process of calculating the position of obj ...
, design
*PJ Harvey – layout, design,
drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art in which an artist uses instruments to mark paper or other two-dimensional surface. Drawing instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, various kinds of paints, inked brushes, colored pencils, crayons, ...
s
*Michelle Henning – cover design
*Seamus Murphy – photography
*Cat Stevens – photography
Charts positions
Singles
Year-end charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
{{Authority control
2011 albums
PJ Harvey albums
Albums produced by Flood (producer)
Island Records albums
Mercury Prize-winning albums
Albums produced by John Parish
Concept albums