Let England Shake

After a record, White Chalk, on which she wiped her slate clean, the better to reinvent herself, that’s precisely what Ms. Harvey does here. She now has a new and wider palette, with strummed guitars, xylophone, Rhodes, mellotron, backing vocals, brass and even some samples, like the surprising military bugle march, all this put to the service of heady melodies that illuminate striking and poetical evocations and meditations on war and its ravages. Masterful.