This glorious album

Hearty congratulations to PJ Harvey on winning her second Mercury Music Prize. I can't say I know much about any of the other albums shortlisted other than Metronomy's The English Riviera and Anna Calvi's self-titled debut, but it's hard to imagine that Let England Shake isn't a richly deserving winner. The Guardian's Alexis Petridis is spot on in acclaiming it as an extraordinary and eccentric concept album about war that's constantly aflame with rage and indignant passion.

Not that everyone appreciated her choice of subject matter, though - here's Ed commenting on (you guessed it) the Daily Mail site: "This woman is an insult to our troops and country. I've just read some of her lyrics, and as you would expect they are very left-wing and anti-English. The fruits of our country are 'deformed children' etc. Polly certainly enjoys the fruits that the Forces deliver though, doesn't she? The freedom of speach, to wear what she likes, to vote and as a woman to appear on TV and have a music career, to worship how she likes and and so on. I suggest she goes and lives in Iran or Afghanistan and leaves the memory of the Glorious Dead alone." Of course, if this Ed had even an ounce of intelligence he'd realise that Let England Shake is far from "anti-English" - quite the opposite, it's an expression of bruised but defiant patriotism, as well as a outcry against futile wars waged in our name...

(Still, not the most moronic comment - that honour goes to the author of the snippet in the Sun's Bizarre section: "I preferred her before she split with Duncan"...)

She last won the award ten years ago, collecting it on September 11th: "It's also really good to actually be here because, when I last won it, I was watching the Pentagon burning from my hotel." To do so with Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, an album largely inspired by the vibrant spirit of New York, must have seemed like a bitter irony. The timing of this victory is equally remarkable - as Petridis notes, it is after all an album called Let England Shake "packed with weirdly prescient images of civil unrest and a ruined Britain".