PJ Harvey has become the first two-time winner of the
Mercury Music Prize for
Let England Shake, her eighth studio album. She's now £20,000 better off.
Harvey last won the prize on the night of September 11th, 2001, for
Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, a surreal event she noted in her acceptance speech...
"It's nice to actually be here. I was in in Washington DC watching The Pentagon burning from my hotel window, so it's good to be here. So much has happened since then. This album took me a long time write. It was very important to me, I wanted to make something that was meaningful not just for myself but for other people, hopefully to make something that would last."
If you're on the fence about Harvey but liked
Stories From The City give
Let England Shake a chance. It's full of quality tunes and, in light of England's current woes, sad and spooky, in a good way. Or as TheVine reviewer Doug Wallen
put it:
"Let England Shake makes for uneasy listening. But it’s addictive at the same time, the denseness and ambition of the thing overloading our senses even as the core of each song feels as direct as a guided missile. As charismatic as it is stubborn and complex, this is just the kind of album people need to be making today, whatever the subject."
The disappointed nominees were:
Adele,
Ghostpoet,
Katy B,
James Blake (who was "too shy" for the red carpet),
Elbow,
Anna Calvi,
Metronomy,
Tinie Tempah,
Everything Everything,
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins and the jazz-handy
Gwilym Simcock.