PJ Harvey "White Chalk"

Artist: PJ Harvey
Album: White Chalk
Label: Island
Release date: 24 September 2007
Genre: Rock
Style: Lo-Fi/Indie Rock

---

Tracklisting:
01. The Devil
02. Dear Darkness
03. Grow Grow Grow
04. When Under Ether
05. White Chalk
06. Broken Harp
07. Silence
08. To Talk To You
09. The Piano
10. Before Departure
11. The Mountain
Total running time: 33' 53"

---

[PJ Harvey - White Chalk - Live in Denmark]

---

[PJ Harvey - Silence - Live in Denmark]

---

[PJ Harvey - Interview excerpt]

"In the early Nineties, much to her consternation, PJ Harvey was acclaimed as Dorset's sole advocate of riot grrl, the short-lived feminist, feral niece of grunge. Such a take on Harvey was understandable: a fearless post-punk Patti Smith tutored in the blues, she wrote songs in which she pilloried her lover's failings ('You leave me dry,' ran 1993's 'Dry') and, typically, appeared on stage clad in Dr Martens, as if underscoring her uncompromising stance.

Since then Harvey has tried on a number of different guises, vividly aware of the perils of stasis. She has been an understated rock traditionalist (Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, which won the Mercury Music Prize in 2001) and, on 1995's To Bring You My Love tour, a catsuit-flaunting, heavily made-up female caricature, shocking those empowered by her previous reluctance to capitalise on her femininity.
Nothing Harvey has done in the past, however, can prepare you for her eighth album, White Chalk, whose cover is as singular as the tunes therein. Sat upright in a long white dress, hands resting on her lap, her anaemic features just about discernible, Harvey resembles a Victorian governess whose joyless gaze suggests she is no stranger to heartache. It's an impression lent further weight by the opener, 'The Devil', wherein she sings 'All of my being is now in pining' over a twinkling, ominous piano, her voice that of a schoolgirl mature beyond her years.

Stranger still than the girlish pitch that she adopts throughout - which, improbably, is incredibly affecting - is Harvey's decision to relinquish the guitar, the instrument on which she's relied for all these years. Pleasingly, however, her audacity pays off, chiefly since White Chalk's driving force, the piano, serves to underline the skeletal beauty of the songs, whether it's the cobwebbed gothic-folk of 'Dear Darkness' ('Dear darkness, I've been your friend for many years') or the dream-like 'To Talk to You'. Here, as if to emphasise the distance she has travelled since White Chalk's predecessor, Uh Huh Her, on which she screamed 'Who the fuck? Get your comb out of there' in the direction of a hapless hairdresser, Harvey converses with her late grandmother. 'Oh grandmother, how I miss you,' she mutters, softly, unable to hit the notes that lie just out of reach, mirroring a young Bjork too outre for the school choir.

This combination of innocence and gloom informs every second of White Chalk. Witness the title track, a paean to Dorset's hills, that while as lovely as anything in 'rock', concludes with Harvey whispering 'there's blood all on my hands'. Witness, too, the singer's tale of an unborn child, 'When Under Ether', a harrowing lullaby, and 'Broken Harp' which starts with a desperate admission ('Please don't reproach me for how empty my life has become') and ends, appropriately, with a cushioned sigh.

Perhaps her pain is all a pose, convincing though it is. Either way, of all Harvey's numerous personae this latest one, the friendless soul adrift in a cruel world, is the guise for which she has spent 15 years preparing. Next time around, who knows, she just might repeat herself." [source]

[Download.Buy]