SOUND JUDGEMENT
The latest album releases reviewed
LET ENGLAND SHAKE: DEMOS PJ HARVEY
HHHHI Every PJ Harvey album is being re-issued on vinyl with the accompanying demos made available as standalones for the first time, with the project now reaching Let England Shake.
The 2011 Mercury Music Prize winner is regarded by many as a career best, and the stripped back nature of these un-released demos highlight the quality of the 12 songs.
The simplicity of the heartbreaking World War One elegy Hanging In The Wire underlines how it is a folk song in a long tradition. The Colour Of The Earth is also about the war to end all wars, while The Glorious Land starts with a military style trumpet salute, with its warning of the damage caused by conflict, the deformed children and the orphaned children.
While these demos naturally miss the rich instrumental tapestry of the originals, the stark arrangements are, if anything, even more powerful, with a strange and terrible beauty.
EXTREME WITCHCRAFT EELS
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Extreme Witchcraft sees E (Mark Oliver Everett ) co-producing with PJ Harvey’s guitarist and producer John Parish, and the sounds are as rich as ever and hark back to the rockier sounds of the Soul Jacker period.
Standout tracks include What It Isn’t, Grandfather Clock Strikes Twelve, and The Magic.
The whole of Extreme Witchcraft ebbs and flows with delicate hopeful trills, heavy drums, optimistic melodies, mixed with dirty, dark distortions and melancholic suppositions – nobody does beautifully bleak yet horrifically hopeful quite like the Eels.
WORLD I UNDERSTAND THE SHERLOCKS
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Three albums in, The Sherlocks continue to carry the torch for anthemic indie rock. What they lack in originality, they make up for in catchy choruses and enthusiasm.
Josh and Andy Davidson left the South Yorkshire band in early 2020 but frontman Kiaran Crook and his brother Brandon, on drums, have recruited two new members and the new line-up has injected a novel energy into these songs.
Tracks like Falling and City Lights will please fans with their squealing guitars and pounding beats but there’s little evidence the band’s songwriting has evolved since their last release, 2019’s Under Your Sky.