pj by jen

A Week With P.J. Harvey's "White Chalk": Day 2

29 October 2007
tell your friends... tell your friends...

Words by Tony Conte // Illustration by Jen Pagnini

Rather than describe “the willies”, I’ll take the same route that Ms. Harvey takes and give them to you:
“Hit her with a hammer/Teeth smashed in/Red tongue’s twitching/Look inside her skeleton”

In this song (with the innocuous title “The Piano”) Harvey takes a simple melodic line and repeats it to properly chilling effect. The vocals are thrown on top of each other like bodies in a mass grave: each voice and melody remains unique, some fragile and some hearty, but in concert with one another they form beautiful, if strikingly disturbing, movements.

It has always been one of Harvey’s strengths to use relatively brief melodies and loop them by simple repetition on an instrument (which had historically been the guitar) while adding multiple melodic lines in order to bathe the listener in a complex song unique in its accessibility. Broadening the usage of the piano in White Chalk has carried Harvey back to square one, in compositional terms, where she must craft her songs according to her proficiency on this instrument. If it were safe to call this album a new beginning, and I believe it is, then I would praise Harvey’s courage in her endeavor. Keep in mind that this beginning is similar to the kind which we all wish to have: to do things over again knowing what we know now. As an artist, it must be a compelling journey, because as a listener one can’t help but listen with rapt attention.

A momentum builds as the songs quietly flourish, and from time to time Harvey seems to remember her old self…she finds her lightly-echoed-voice in order to wail the incoherent words of a melody which never resolves, sounding like the wind over so many gravestones.

With track #1, “The Devil”, the percussionist begins the steady, unreliable beat of a heart which progressively quickens over the album’s #11 song cycle. By track #7, “Silence”, the uneasy beat has sped up and become the fragile yet persistent heartbeat of a sparrow. Soon it’s the pacing of a woman running barefoot through the woods. The percussion mirrors the sense of being chased…be it from the devil, from a ghost, or from the daunting task of outperforming an awe-inspiring back-catalogue of achievements.

Coming in Day #3: What the hell is that hissing sound?

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Shannon McArdle





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