I don’t mean to suggest “Let England Shake” is anything other than excellent, but I can’t help thinking that one supplementary reason why PJ Harvey’s latest album has had such laudatory reviews (better, mostly, than the equally good “White Chalk”) is that offers journalists so much to write about. “Let England Shake” is so full of imagery, content, allusion, it offers up boundless possibilities of meaning. Reductively, it has been called a protest album. Expansively, you can parse (or, maybe, project on) it for all manner of ideas about war and nationality. The same goes for Harvey’s show at the Troxy in London last night. Her band – Jean-Marc Butty on drums, Mick Harvey and John Parish peregrinating between various keyboards and guitars – are decked out like gentleman soldiers from a distant England (and Australia, of course), all waistcoats, faintly military greatcoats and, in the case of Butty, ostentatious riding boots. Harvey, meanwhile, stays far away on the other side of the stage, a ghostly presence in white (the night before: black) and with a headdress of black feathers swept back like antlers, or a halo of sorts. Tempted into fishing for meaning in the costumes and set-up, you could see her as a kind of angel/spirit/embodiment of Britannia, hovering in the vicinity of doomed men. Celestial allusions are enhanced by the fact she’s playing a harp, after a fashion, but it is of course an autoharp – something a little crankier and less pure, all told. Not for the first time live, Harvey has that weird, inscrutable half-smile for much of the show, which as usual suggests some sort of imperious detachment, and also suppressed nerves. Typically, again, everything that happens in the ensuing 90 minutes seems to be meticulously thought-out and orchestrated (save a brief false start for “The Devil”). This is the latest self-contained, entirely plotted Harvey project brought to fruition, with a handful of old songs selected for thematic and instrumental congruity. The set-up tonight involves a lot of semi-sepulchral keyboards (on sturdy old wooden tables), guitars, hardly any bass, and those unnerving samples that are deployed with such spare, judicious effect on “Let England Shake”: “Blood And Fire”; the battlefield bugle; the Kurdish wail that threads through a sensational “England”, with Butty at the front of the stage, an outsized drummer boy in an unforgiving spotlight. These are silvery, brittle, unsteady songs, but ones that are clearly strong enough to stick around: “The Words That Maketh Murder”, “All And Everyone”, “In The Dark Places”, “On Battleship Hill”, all great. Live, the perceived folkishness of this music is hard to spot. Instead, Harvey seems to have shot for an idiosyncratic re-imagining of the past, generating an atmosphere with new tools, rather than an actual recreation. A bit like steampunk, only aesthetically satisying, perhaps. For me, though, the highlight of the “Let England Shake” songs is unexpected – “Colour Of The Earth”, as much Mick Harvey’s lead as hers, and an ineffably moving moment where the soldiers and victims that populate the songs are given a voice, rather than observed mournfully from a distance. “The Last Living Rose”, with Harvey on guitar, provides something of a throwback to her earliest, stentorian songs. Nothing from those first two albums makes the cut here, though. “Down By The Water”, “C’Mon Billy” and an encore snarl through “Meet Ze Monsta” are imported from “To Bring You My Love”; “Big Exit” comes from “Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea”; “The Pocket Knife” from Uh-Huh-Her. Better yet, there are a couple each from “Is This Desire” and “White Chalk”. The encore begins with that heavier “Meet Ze Monsta”, and initially seems to be providing a meaty coda to the more ethereal proceedings of the main set. But then she shifts gear into two of her greatest songs (I think); “Angelene” and “Silence”. The latter, especially, is tremendous, Harvey’s voice, strong and clear, rising above the rough-hewn harmonies of her bandmates, perfectly in control. Part of me wishes that her next impeccably-conceived project might find her synthesising a kind of looseness, even abandon. But in the face of such formal brilliance, it seems churlish to complain. Anyone else there? Setlist: LET ENGLAND SHAKE THE WORDS THAT MAKETH MURDER ALL & EVERYONE THE GUNS CALLED ME… WRITTEN ON THE FOREHEAD IN THE DARK PLACES THE DEVIL SKY LIT UP THE GLORIOUS LAND THE LAST LIVING ROSE ENGLAND THE POCKET KNIFE BITTER BRANCHES DOWN BY THE WATER C’MON BILLY HANGING IN THE WIRE ON BATTLESHIP HILL BIG EXIT THE COLOUR OF THE EARTH MEET ZE MONSTA ANGELENE SILENCE

About ten years ago, I saw a terrific show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London by an artist called Janet Cardiff. The centrepiece of the exhibition, as I remember it, was a room in which were placed a large ring of speakers, playing Thomas Tallis’ choral piece, “Spem In Alium”, in such a way that each singer’s voice emanated from a separate point. It’s a wonderful piece of music, but experienced in this way it really emphasised the spacial possibilities of music. Here, it was possible to move about in the soundfield and hear the piece from radically different angles. I’ve seen bands try something similar with quadrophonic performances – I seem to remember a phase of Super Furry Animals doing this – but nothing quite so flexible and at times disorienting (maybe playing the Flaming Lips' “Zaireeka” on four stereos is the best analogue). Anyhow, I was playing “The Magic Place” by Julianna Barwick last night, and something in there reminded me of Cardiff’s installation. Barwick’s album is released on Asthmatic Kitty and recorded in Sufjan Stevens’ place, and it almost entirely consists of her wordless harmonies, looped and layered until she completes something dense and rapturous. There are plenty of interesting comparisons to be made here, but it’s track two, “Keep Up The Good Work”, that seems to me most connected with medieval polyphony. And the way the loops loom in and out, there’s an illusion of depth which keeps fluctuating: as if Barwick’s vocal tracks have been separated out into different channels and different speakers, and it’s possible to move among them. Rarely, I guess, has a record so deserved to be labelled ethereal. Maybe a more realistic precedent would be the Cocteau Twins: “Vow”, in particular, has the air of something from perhaps “Victorialand” or “The Moon And The Melodies”, though I haven’t played them in years and can’t be sure. An even better example from 4AD’s eldritch phase might be Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares, though “The Magic Place” itself and “Cloak” make me think of that choir remixed by a lunar hand like, say, Wolfgang Voigt. A working knowledge of minimalist techno becomes more apparent on the penultimate “Prizewinning”, where the one and only beat on the album appears, muffled, deep in the mix. Gradually, though, it builds into a battery of martial drumming, an artful and unexpected climax to an album where only the odd piano, synth and a bass (on “Bob In Your Gait”) seem to supplement Barwick’s vocal science. More references for this lovely record: spectral passages of the Bon Iver album; portions of Panda Bear’s solo work, especially “Young Prayer” (I must write about “Tomboy”, incidentally); a less gothic Fursaxa; and, I’m afraid, Sigur Ros – “Bob In Your Gait” strays perilously close to their textures for my liking. You could, too, indict Barwick as a kind of Brooklyn Enya. But mostly it works beautifully. Let me know what you think.

A few years ago, Cornershop’s somewhat capricious practices threw up a single called “Topknot”, fronted by a singer, Bubbley Kaur, who Tjinder Singh claimed that he’d discovered singing in a laundrette. A sort of hugely enjoyable bubblegum Punjabi folk song, it was trailed as the first track from a whole album of Cornershop/Bubbley Kaur collaborations. Not atypically of Cornershop, the trail went dead almost immediately, and when “Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast” came out a couple of years ago, Kaur was nowhere to be heard on it. It’s a mistake, though, to underestimate the doggedness of Singh and Ben Ayres; so here, finally - and after Lord knows how many setbacks, hiatuses, business conundrums and so on – is “Cornershop & Double ‘O’ Groove Of…”, a full set of new Cornershop jams, fronted by the honeyed Bubbley Kaur. If you’ve been in any way deterred by the glammish riffing that’s taken prime place on the last couple of Cornershop albums, “Double ‘O’ Groove” will be especially welcome. Essentially, it’s another episode in the career of one of Britain’s most idiosyncratic and cherishable bands – one who haven’t been particularly well served by the one-hit wonder daftness that’s stuck to them since “Brimful Of Asha”. There’s actually precious little guitar anywhere to be found on “Double ‘O’ Groove”, save a ravishing acoustic cycle that runs through the closing “Don’t Shake It”. Mostly, Singh and Ayres craft together unsteady fusions involving sitars, looped samples (a curious vibe of ‘70s Open University idents, possibly?), analogue gloop and some very serious breaks. Over this Kaur sings in a joyous, unperturbed way, seemingly oblivious to what’s going on beneath her. These are far from seamless fusions – it feels more like it’s been Gaffataped together. But that’s part of the charm – and, I suspect, part of the point. I’m not sure whether it’s Ben playing the bass here, but that seems to be the most powerful force on the record besides Kaur’s voice. Rarely, I think, has Cornershop’s love of funk come across in such a warm and effective way. Which means that my current favourite on the album, “The Biro Pen”, especially, sounds like one of the best things the band have done in a career that must have been rolling haphazardly on for the best part of 20 years now. I keep thinking of an Indian folk recasting of “Grooving With Mr Bloe”…