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2011 – Let England Shake

June 7th, 2019 · Posted by Skuds in Music · No Comments · Music

While the singles charts continued to be full of songs by “x featuring y”, where x=someone I haven’t heard of and y=someone I have vaguely heard of, there were some interesting albums this year. It was especially good for albums by the sons of other musicians, with albums by Ian Dury’s son Baxter, Neil Finn’s son Liam and Fela Kuti’s son Seun. Neil Finn also had an album out that was basically him and his wife messing around in their music room at home, and turning out a decent album.A few old acts showed that they still had new music in them – John Foxx, Blancmange, Nick Lowe, Erasure and Gang of Four who released their best album for ages called Content. Primus also released Green Naugahyde, which was as reliably mad as their other albums.

Something else that caught my ear was Fujiya& Miyagi’s Ventrilloquizzing album. I only recently discovered that they are a relatively local band, from Brighton. A lot of their stuff seems very motorik-influenced, so as a bit of a krautrock fan I am drawn to them.

The song of the year, as far as I am concerned is Let England Shake by PJ Harvey. Part of me still prefers her old raucus sound on songs like 50ft Queenie, M-Bike or Sheela-na-gig and I couldn’t imagine her swapping electric guitar for autoharp, but the album was great, winning the Mercury prize. The title track is especially catchy, with its delicate percussion and a definite highlight of the year for me.

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