Chords for PJ Harvey - BBC2 The Culture Show - Feb 2011

Next tonight, NME once called her one of the greatest lyricists in the world,
and PJ Harvey is certainly one of the most thoughtful and thought-provoking rock stars.
Her eighth solo album, Let England Shake, bristles with questions of nationhood and conflict.
Miranda Sawyer went to meet her.
_ _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _
[F] _ _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _ _
[F] _ _ _ _ _ [Gb] PJ Harvey is an [F] artist who never stands still.
Each [N] of her albums is self-contained with its own particular atmosphere,
and she herself takes on many personas for [G] the sake of her music.
[Bb] This is love, [C] this is [F] love, _ [G] _ [Bb] this is love.
[C] _
_ _ [G] _ _ She can move from confrontational 50 [Gm]-foot Queenie to exuberant city [C] lover,
from post-punk guitar to [Bb] affecting broken piano.
_ [D] Her latest album, Let [G] England Shake, was recorded here in Dorset,
and covers [Bbm] war, civil unrest, and [C] England's violent roots. _
_ _ [G] _ [D] So, let's start from the beginning.
Where did the idea for this LP [B] come from?
One of the _ _ markers that I kept in the forefront of my mind when I was writing,
and one of the instigators of the whole project,
_ was when I began to think about there are officially appointed war artists and poets.
There are people that are always on the front line of whatever conflict zone there is.
And I began to wonder where the song equivalent was,
you know, where is the officially appointed songwriter?
Can I be that?
And obviously there isn't a post of such.
So, in some ways, in my mind, I appointed myself in that position,
_ and asked myself that question,
okay, how would I report back, and try to do it in an impartial way,
and an unbiased way, but a very human way.
Just the simple witness, the storyteller,
the person that was on the ground and saw it happen.
Yeah, like war poets.
Yes, like war poets, or like any foreign correspondent, really.
But trying to do that through song.
God [C] damned _ _ Europeans _ Deeply bagged Beautiful _ England
And the [F] great damned [C] _ filthiness of ages
[F] And [C] battered [F] books and fog [G] rolled down [C] behind the mountains
On the [F] graveyards of [A] dead sea captains
[C] Yet we [F] walked through [C] the stinking alleys
To the [F] music of [C] drunken _ [G] beatings
[C] Past the [F] Thames, [C] river _ [F] glistening
[C] Like [F] gold hastily sold
[G] For nothing, _ _ _ nothing
[A] _
[C] You started with the lyrics, didn't you?
And the lyrics, you can read the lyrics entirely [A] separately,
and they're [C] like poems.
The way that I write has changed very gradually,
but has changed in that I concentrate pretty much solely on words
for great periods of time.
And some of those words remain as poems,
and some become short prose.
It's really become my starting point
that the words have to work first.
I sang them for a long time a cappella, _
almost so that my intellect was not particularly engaged.
And I ended up with very simple,
almost nursery-like quality to the melody.
I wanted the melody to be so simple
that it could be sung from one person to another,
it would be membered straight away.
It's that simple.
That harks back to how music ever begins
in the tradition of storytelling.
_ Folk music is often very simple
because it's just passed on from one generation to another.
Everybody remembers it.
It was never written down
because the melodies have this simple,
very [A] strong quality to them. _
_ _ _ For the past 20 [A] years,
PJ Harvey has [C] been a unique voice in the British music scene.
In that [A] time, she's recorded [C] eight solo albums
and collaborated with artists such [A] as Björk, John Parrish,
Nick [C] Cave and Tom York,
who appeared on her 2001 [A] Mercury Award-winning album
[C] Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea.
[A] Most recently, she's worked with [C] Francis Ford Coppola
for his magazine All Story,
revealing another [A] one of her artistic [C] talents.
I have got something I want to show you,
which is something that you've done,
[A] which is some illustrations you did
[C] for Francis Ford Coppola's magazine.
Do you want to talk about this a little bit?
Yes, I'd love to.
There's some bits in here
that I [Eb] kind of related [G] to the album a bit,
but I might be wrong,
so I wanted [C] to ask you about them.
These ones.
Yeah, [Dm] you're right.
_ You're right on the [G] ball.
I've always [C] painted, I've always [F] drawn.
I come [Dm] from, initially, came from the visual [G] arts background
before I even [C] began music.
[Fm] But the first opportunity [Dm] I've ever had to show any of my work
was [G] in this magazine.
[C] I did a whole series of people standing in this [Dm] position.
LAUGHTER
And they were [G] drawn while I [C] was writing and recording the [F] record.
This is a kind [Dm] of, to me, an English landscape,
a completely un [G]-English character.
[C] It does relate to the record in the way [Dm] the cycle keeps happening.
So I've got all these [G] people standing in the same position
[C] from an entirely different [F] era.
You [Dm] can obviously see what [G] you're hearing in the [C] record.
Yeah.
Yeah, how [Am] weird, yeah.
Yeah, it's really enthralling.
Do you have pictures in your head that [G] you want to illustrate?
Everything goes together, so I'm always painting,
I'm always writing words.
I always have music just coursing through my system,
though I rarely sing or play an instrument
unless I'm specifically writing a song.
I've found that over the years.
I don't think I'm really a musician.
I'm much more interested in the words
and then I need to make a bed for them.
_ [F] _ _ _ [Am] _ _
[G] _ _ _ _ [Dm] _ _ [Am] _ _
[G] The sky [F] of the [Am] ocean shimmer
[G] The head [F] shake the lost living rock _
_ _ _ _ [Am] Quiver
[C] _ _
[F] [C] I feel like I've just begun.
That's the strongest feeling.
[F] I felt that [C] _ with this record in particular
I've [F] uncovered [C] a new way of writing
that's just the beginning for me.
I feel like I've got so much yet to do
and that's a wonderful feeling. _ _
[F] _ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _
[F] _ _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _
[F] _ _ [Em] _ _ _ [Bm] _ _ _
[F] _ [C] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [N] _ _ _ _ Let England