Listen to PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, Courtesy of NPR

NPR's Exclusive First Listen Series has PJ Harvey's new album Let England Shake streaming in its entirety a week before its official release:

The topics are as bleak and violent as they were on her most lacerating work, but this time the subjects are soldiers falling in battle ("like lumps of meat") and landscapes that have been torn up, both physically and spiritually. Much of Let England Shake feels like an elegy for not just her homeland, but also the entire world; the bitterness behind the title of "This Glorious Land" is underlined by words like, "Our lands are plowed by tanks and feet, feet marching."

Listen here.