PJ Harvey Wins the 2011 Mercury Prize! iTunes Session EP To Be Released Sept. 12th

Harvey is also the only artist in history of the prize to win it twice. Check out her performance of “The Words that Maketh Murder” and accepting the award below.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77HnyHlfHNQ[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpkh0kORUDk[/youtube]

 

Beginning Sept. 12th Vagrant Records and iTunes will release a special session with Harvey featuring 7 live recordings and an interview. Be on the look out for our review and pre-order this special EP via iTunes today.

Track Listing :

  1. Let England Shake
  2. The Words That Maketh Murder
  3. The Last Living Rose
  4. Written On The Forehead
  5. Angelene
  6. C’Mon Billy
  7. Down By The Water
  8. Interview

P J Harvey/ Seamus Murphy, “The Colour of the Earth,” “England,” & “Written on the Forehead”

Three more video treatments by Seamus Murphy are now live. Check them out below. “The Colour of the Earth” is incredible. “Written on the Forehead” is also timely and haunting. This album still holds my “best album of 2011… so far” prize.

 

“The Colour of the Earth”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG8KjeRoUKw[/youtube]

“England”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDjIGB7GJoQ[/youtube]

“Written on the Forehead”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saksKorZEoc[/youtube]

The Glorious Land

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHACHdNFH0Y[/youtube]

The 4th short film in a 12 part series which accompanies PJ Harvey’s album, Let England Shake, has now been released.

Here are a few words from director Seamus Murphy:

As with the other films, I wanted to avoid too literal an interpretation of Polly’s lyrics, but to try to remain true to the spirit and feel of the track. The Glorious Land was the third film we edited and completed in Berlin in the cycle of the 12 films, the first was The Words That Maketh Murder and the second was The Last Living Rose. Both editor, Sebastian, and I loved this track, and for me the bugle blast and where it sits is truly a glorious thing. It has the courage to be discordant, out of place and yet perfect on its own terms, surely the quality of great Art? At the first London show at the Troxy last week, when the bugle came in as they played The Glorious Land it was like experiencing the music floating high above the band and audience and hovering over all of us like a massive Jackson Pollack. And it swung.

I had noticed interesting things coming through the trees when driving around Dorset in October. Autumn colours, the sunlight streaming through the trees, the effect of movement during driving, how things changed if I speeded up or slowed down. How the angle at which the camera was held changed things so I started experimenting with shooting and driving. Some of this was shot through the car sunroof straight up into the sky, some deliberately overexposed and out of focus, to increase the abstraction. I particularly liked the white, washed-out look of the sky and how at times there are stretches of pure white. I originally had All And Everyone in my head for these images, but knew visually it could work elsewhere. But when we started editing The Glorious Land it became obvious it was made for it.

Let England Shake

PJ Harvey’s eighth studio album, Let England Shake, was released this past Tuesday. The album has received amazingly positive reviews including one perfect ten from NME. NME critic, Mike Williams writes, “Francis Ford Coppola can lay claim to the war movie. Ernest Hemingway the war novel. Polly Jean Harvey, a 41-year-old from Dorset, has claimed the war album.”

Photographer Seamus Murphy, whose work on Afghanistan is included on his website, A Darkness Visible, created short video pieces inspired by each song. So far we have seen videos for “The Last Living Rose” and “The Words that Maketh Murder.” Below you will see the video treatment for “Let England Shake.”

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2Qlb0qFLFE[/youtube]