And so PJ Harvey continues where 2011's Let England Shake ended, more or less. That album explored the legacy of the first World War via songs formed by what the songwriter described as "a human being affected by politics".
The album went on to win that year's Mercury Music Prize (her second, following the nod for 2001's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea), and set her on a course to resume her investigations into conflicted parts of the world.
Her mission? To analyse the results of Western government (specifically the US) rulings on different lives around the world.
For background to Let England Shake, Harvey travelled to Gallipoli; for The Hope Six Demolition Project (the title stems from the US government's much criticised urban renewal programme), she gleaned details and inspiration from visiting Afghanistan, Kosovo, and underprivileged areas of Washington DC.
More field trips than tourist-driven treks, she set about to document in plain-speaking, vivid reportage what she experienced. The result is as unsettling and provocative as you might expect. For a change, this is rock star as committed investigative journalist – no ego, no grandstanding, just the stark facts.
Dramatic, unambiguous lyrics such as "an amputee and a pregnant hound sit by the young men with withered arms" (The Ministry of Social Affairs) and "a face pock-marked and hollow, he's saying dollar, dollar" (Dollar, Dollar) depict a trained eye with a skill for detail.
A line in The Community of Hope – "this is just a drug town, just zombies . . . they're going to put Walmart here" – joins the dots from Joni Mitchell's "they paved paradise and put up a parking lot" line from Big Yellow Taxi, except 45 years on there's much more than menace in the air.
Despite the narrative of global conflict and confrontation, the music doesn’t skimp on melody. There is malformed blues here, distinctive tonal colour there and an ambient undertone throughout.
Such a record could have buckled under a lack of narrative conviction, but Harvey walks towards political landmines without flinching.
