New music can be a beginning. One that struck deeply when it was released in February 2011 (and pushed my resolution to invest in DN, WV) is PJ Harvey's Let England Shake. Dominated by the auto-harp and Harvey's odd vocal phrasing but rounded out by an amazing arrangement, the music is the perfect setting for the stone: PJ's political (she calls it apolitical) message: England has wasted itself in war, England deserves better; England is taken away from us, England made me; England is at a dead end, long live England.
She taps into a form of tribal awareness (her "I" is always "We") I've heard in poets called to speak for a people (think Yeats, Walcott, Boland, Rich, Brecht).
To prove her sincerity (perhaps too much), she performs the songs from this album in a white dress with a raven crest of hair, auto-harp clutched to her breast. She is Athena, the White Goddesss, Freya. She is England.
Her disparagement of war as a way into the voice of her people is a large part of the inspiration of Dead of the Night, WV. Here is one of the many strong songs from the album:
