Customer Reviews

White Chalk

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

P J Harvey's stated objective has always been to get as far away from her last album as possible. Which is why, following her accessible album Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, she followed up with a difficult and unloveable lo-fi album in Uh Huh Her.
Three years on, and she's travelled even further into experimental territory with a brittle, ghostly folk album that's rich in stark atmosphere but totally devoid of melody.
Based almost entirely around stark, minimal, repetitive piano and organ figures and featuring almost no guitars or percussion at all, the album straddles the boundary between contemporary classical and Victorian American vaudeville.
From the moment it begins, it almost sends shivers down the spine (in a good way) and just keeps getting better the more you listen to it.
The breathtaking title track "White Chalk" (which talks of being buried beneath Dorset's chalk hills) finds Polly even more tender vocally, and set against some fine acoustic strumming. Her soaring vocals midway through prove entirely captivating, while the gentle riffs are a shimmering delight.
The themes of the album aren't exactly bright rays of sunshine: "To Talk to You" is one of the more touching moments of the album as Polly tries to reach her grandmother through song. The first single "When Under Ether" deals with drug incantations and "Dear Darkness" is like an open letter from Sartre.
As ever, the topics are deathly and made all the more brutal and haunting because they're delivered in a fragile whisper to a barren accompaniment.
The album is unsettling, strange and yet hauntingly beautiful.
There are many moments of genuine brilliance here to help you alleviate the day-to-day, and which remind you why people make music in the first place: to share their honesty and imaginative ideas, in a way that's so honest that its authenticity is refreshing.
It's an album cut with plenty of things to transcend you, leaving you in a state of bliss and wonderment.
"White Chalk" may not be the greatest album of all time, it may not be to everyone's tastes, even Harvey's own fans , it may not even be Polly's finest.
But it's a mark of her determination to try new things and continually challenge herself that she's not afraid to be different.
For those new to PJ Harvey this may not be the most accessible album. For those who have followed this far on the journey, "White Chalk" is another wonderful moment - a provocative offering. An album of lonely beauty and piercing sorrow, "White Chalk" is P.J. Harvey back at the peak of her considerable powers.
Give it a chance and you'll come to realise that "White Chalk" is every bit as impressive as PJ's earlier record, but in a more grown-up and mature way.

Can't say why this album appeals to me so much, I wasn't expecting to like it. "Is This Desire?" was the last thing she put out that I enjoyed, and I'd kind of given up on her (and music in general). Currently, though, "White Chalk" is possibly my favorite Harvey album to date. The production is simple, unadorned, perfect for the songs. The arrangements are sparse, but extremely subtle and well conceived. Hardly ever do I hear an album where I feel like every note and drum beat has been placed exactly where it needs to go, with nothing extra and nothing left out. Leaves me a bit floored, actually.

As for the lyrics: yeah, they're hell for bleak and depressing and uber-personal. On another album they might be too much for me to take, but here, with this music, she manages to make it work (for MY earholes, at least). An album so clearly private and confessional, I feel lucky just to be privy to its contents.

This is an album that you need to listen to a couple of times - you'll see, it will grow. You'll be humming the songs and not know where they came from. It's different from what she's done before; I would associate it with most of 'Is This Desire' - and 'The Slow Drug' from 'Uh Huh Her'. So if you liked those albums and are willing to give this one time, you'll probably like it. If you like the rockier stuff, you can always still pick up her brilliant but overlooked '4-Track Demos' from 1993.

If I'd listened to some of the reviews I've read I would never have bought "White Chalk," but now I realize that the reviewers dismissed it because they couldn't hear it. The "real" PJ Harvey is categorized in the ossified mind as the punky, guitar happy howler of classic work like "Is This Desire?" She's celebrated for being an artist, but paradoxically criticized for daring to change, to follow her bliss, the reaction akin to that of horrified McDonald's patrons if they bit into Big Macs made of Filet Mignon. The burger might actually be wonderful, but it just wouldn't "taste right" because it wasn't what they expected. "White Chalk" isn't "Is This Desire?" (One of my favorite records), but it's great in its own right.

A lot of contemporary music grows tedious by the first minute - O.K., I get it, you want more, Britney - but White Chalk has been my constant soundtrack for the last week, and, despite being only about thirty-four minutes long, hasn't palled a bit. There's a minor key, folksy feel to it, from the acoustic instruments to the restrained, whispery sound of PJ's matchless voice, the lyrics suggesting old murder ballads and overheard confessions. It's autumnal, just right for this time of year, spooky and haunting, a suite of sepia toned chamber music in the key of regret, nostalgia and dread. The same way a whisper makes you listen more actively than a shout,the quiet complexity of White Chalk remains intriguing -- there's something to it, something that moves and engages, shaded rather than hid, making the whole profound and real in a world that so often prefers sameness and plastic pretension.

I didn't know until today that this album was released and bought it immediatly. I had been anxiously waiting for Ms. Harvey's new album since the confusing Uh huh her, and I don't know why people say it grows on you, I loved it since the very first time!

Harvey's vocals are out of this world, so fragile, ethereal... she is great in transmiting those inner feelings we experience many times but just don't know how to express... all that longing, frustration, despair...

And the cover is genious! Another win for PJ!

PJ Harvey provides more drama in one album than most artists create in a career. Ms. Harvey has just taken her meloncholic trip to another level. White Chalk is a tremendous achievement. With timeless instruments and ghost-like vocals PJ harvey has created one of the finest albums of 07.

Through layers and layers of atomsphere, Harvey spins a world of her own. A world out of time. Much like Neutral Milk Hotel's In the aeroplane over the sea and Nick Drake's Pink Moon, White Chalk has no peers in modern music. These three albums could have been released anytime over the last fifty years.

Throughout White Chalk, Harvey's voice quivers over the delicate tinkling of an old piano. PJ has put away her electric guitar and scaled back her famous howl to whispering heights. Harvey wills her piano to tell a sad story in the same way she could bend the notes blue on her guitar.

The song White Chalk is one of the best of her career. One pictures a ghost-like figure searching the English moors for yesterday's answers; Answers just beyond her reach. Other highlights include: the disturbing Dear Darkness, the graceful Silence and the unrestrained (finally) The Mountain.

White Chalk uses quiet effects to affect listeners and this makes it one of the finest releases of 2007.

i am not a big fan of pj harveys, but after reading a review i was very interested in hearing it. The cd works in so many ways, sad and dark, songs like grow grow grow, white chalk, the mountian and dear darkness are gothic and outstanding tracks. i love the sum what out of tune piano, it work very well with the material on this cd. I have heard alot of pj other cds, but i think this is one of the best things she has done. Unlike the big mess that Tori Amos released this year, American doll posse, that was one big mess. hats off to pj harvy for this sad and dark yet outstanding release.

I'm still digesting this one, but my initial reaction is dissatisfaction. I love everything PJ has done so far, and I always look forward to how each album is nicely different from the last. This one feels a little too "samey" throughout, though. For the first time ever with PJ, I started getting a little tired of the sound of her voice due to the way she sings on this one. It is by no means awful and I'm still giving it a chance, but so far it's my least favorite of Pj Harvey album.

In a recent interview, she said there were 3 albums she'd been satisfied with at the time she'd made them - this one, Is This Desire? and To Bring You My Love. This is more subdued than her other ones and significantly sparser, but if you've been a fan of her music, this one is much more cohesive thematically. As far as being sparse, it still sounds like her and the basic vibe's still there. I wish it was longer, but then a lot of good albums fall on the shorter side. Again, if you like her other stuff, you'd probably agree that this is one of her better ones, too.

Upon listening to this album in 2007, when it first came out, I immediately realized that there was something special about it, and thought it would continue to speak to me year in and year out. Some time has elapsed, and I can say that my prediction has held true thus far. White Chalk is a jewel, one of those rare works of art that transcend genre and give voice to emotion with impeccable intellectual honesty.

PJ Harvey delivers a collection of eleven perfect tracks, which combine to form a moving, if mysterious, story of abandonment and sorrow, of gloom and doom. Whereas the overall narrative may be elusive -- it's hard to say whether the premise is the loss of a child and subsequent departure of a companion, the demise of one parent and folly of the other as witnessed by a young girl powerless to keep disaster at bay, betrayal and heartbreak, or none/all of the above -- one track passes the torch to the next, creating a seamless succession of scenes. These are without doubt pages ripped out of the same book, where cohesion and absolute integrity are used to good effect.

With commendable lyricism, mastery of the language worthy of the best poets, brevity both beautiful and intense, PJ Harvey depicts a journey not from here to there, but from one state of despair to another. Half ghost town in the West, half heath in Dorset, this is a lonely place, yet one many adults will inhabit sooner or later. The mood is dark, but also uniquely epic (not dissimilar to some passages of Britten's The Turn of the Screw, although the comparison may seem far-fetched to some). The instrumentation is not suggestive of any grandeur (or of any aspiration to grandeur, for that matter), but most certainly conveys a sense of solemnity and of ladylike dignity in the face of disaster that I would indeed term grand.

This work is not confrontational: even in the rare instances in which bleak composure is supplanted by loud despair, it is so obvious that no one (not even the moon) is there to listen to the heroine, that her cry never ceases to be inward. This album is not about the moment in which tragedy occurs, or is first discovered, either. It's about the aftermath of tragedy -- about its effects on this human soul.

In a manner of speaking, the heroine doesn't shout, but rather stares blankly: that's what makes her so scary, and so convincing. Pain takes on the guise of annihilation. It gnaws at her soul, draining it of any joy or willpower. It is cloaked in whispers and good manners, but ever present in the background. And internalized, silenced and bottled up, it seems somehow more permanent -- invincible even. While she soldiers on to a march-like rhythm on a few tracks, it would sometimes seem that her ultimate resolve is not to resolve this situation at all, but to let it swallow her whole. Any effort to the contrary is useless, and all former solace insignificant. Darkness is dear, invoked as the only possible remedy.

To be sure, there is a victim in this story, who comes to her death not by bludgeoning or by other unladylike blood-spilling. The weapon here is not a dagger, but a rope.