In another dazzling leap forward following the ghostly piano reveries of White Chalk, Polly Harvey’s eighth album takes a sonically adventurous avant- folk-rock tour of a filthy, bitter, blood-soaked dystopian England.
Lyrically, it is reportedly the Dorset diva’s least autobiographical work to date, yet it seethes with biting anger about the state of the nation and our imperial antics abroad, drawing inspired historical parallels between the World War I bloodbath of Gallipoli and recent events in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Not that Harvey’s elliptical poetry ever resorts to preachy literalism, but there are concrete hints in the woozily hypnotic All And Everyone and the roaringly dramatic, falsetto-voiced On Battleship Hill. Elsewhere, the perfumed heat-haze of an unnamed Middle Eastern warzone is brilliantly evoked in the shimmering, Cocteaus-ish Written On The Forehead.
Harvey has come a long way from her scouring blues-rock roots. But this bewitching album, loaded with exotic sounds and alien beauty, may well be her best yet.
