pj by jen

A Week With P.J. Harvey's "White Chalk": Day 1

25 October 2007
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Words by Tony Conte // Illustration by Jen Pagnini

On the cover of her new album, PJ Harvey does not smile. She does not smirk, nor sport a glimmer in her eye, nor does she appear to be writhing in some sort of existential agony (like many of her previous albums). She sits stiffly upright, as in a daguerreotype, steely and unmoved by the camera, hands formally collected in her lap, her Victorian dress rumpled in enough places to suggest some amount of movement prior to the photo flash. In the photo she is ghostly and overexposed. White Chalk, as an album, is not a happy camper.

The Peej has traded in the signature screaming guitar of her early years along with the full-throated wail she’d nearly trademarked (doing for rock’s scream queens what Jamie Lee Curtis did for women in horror films: up the ante) for an upright piano and the breathy soprano of a faltering bird.

Of her entire catalogue, the only album which even approximates White Chalk’s eerily unsettling tone is 1998’s Is This Desire? which has proven itself worthy, over the past nine years, of being considered one of her strongest albums to date. White Chalk is not a retread of any album past, however, and I’d be sorry to suggest so. No, this is all new territory. In 1998 Harvey’s interest seemed to lie in filling the shoes of many women and telling each of their forlorn stories. This time around she follows many lives in life and death, but without the signature squeal we’ve come to expect from her. Instead she sneaks up on you quietly…when you’re not looking. Look at the titles of some of the songs and just try to stave off a somber mood:

The Devil
Dear Darkness
When Under Ether
Before Departure
Silence

But the album itself isn’t smothered under the weight of such heavy topics. Much like the album’s cover, it sits in staunch defiance of death and its cold intimations. White Chalk rises against the night sky like wisps of smoke from a funeral pyre. It demands your attention the way a whisper might…a whisper slipping from the lips of a veiled, dying bride.

Up Tomorrow: What are “the willies”, and how the hell has Harvey fit so many into a terse 33 minutes of music?

P.J. Harvey Official Site

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Shannon McArdle

Redeye Distribution



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