Let England Shake

Over the next twelve days we will be featuring a new music video featuring PJ Harvey by Seamus Murphy daily. The accompanying text by Seamus will give an insight into his thoughts about making the videos. ENJOY!

This is probably the film I had most sketched out in my head before shooting. The dark, slightly hysterical lilt of the melody made me think of a fairground run by Alfred Hitchcock on a bender. I thought a carousel with riderless horses could work well and filed it away as something to look out for. I was driving along the motorway one night and saw a Ferris wheel lit up and turning in the distance. I'd had a frustrating day shooting in Liverpool, so I was pretty reluctant when I took the exit to investigate. It was a Christmas fair in Chester, and as I walked in . . . there was my carousel, turning away without a customer in sight. The Ferris wheel appears at the end of the film for 'On Battleship Hill'. Punch and Judy also suggested themselves for this track, a suitably dark children's entertainment with overtones of domestic violence. It is seen in England as being very English, which being typically English has its roots elsewhere, tracing back to the 16th-century Italian commedia dell'arte. Mark Poulton of Poulton's Puppets at Paignton (Punch couldn't have said it better) makes the puppets himself and was generous enough to perform off-season.
The fairground scene which opens the film is on Canvey Island in Essex, shot on a bright freezing day in December. Earlier that day I had shot two tankers in a shipping collision off Southend, which appears in the film. This catastrophe didn't make the front page, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico did. That was a joke. The film that opens with farmer John Diment of Dorset is one of the films where I had someone speak the first few lines of the song that follows. I wanted these vignettes to be a record of the characters one could meet on travels around England. It also focuses attention on the lyrics, which can sound strange and beautiful without the music. Polly researched deeply for this album, delving into books and archives, reading letters from young soldiers who wrote and expressed themselves in very personal ways. She manages to capture this in the songs and I was hoping the lyrics spoken by a non-actor could reinforce that intimacy.

PJ Harvey Web Site

www.pjharvey.net

England Photo Essay by Seamus Murphy

http://www.viiphoto.com/showstory.php?nID=1230