PJ Harvey - 'White Chalk' (Island Records) Released 24/09/07

‘White Chalk’ is PJ Harvey’s eighth studio album and her newest release since 2004’s critically acclaimed ‘Uh Huh Her’; put quite simply it’s a staggering body of work. Dispensing with the guitar in favour of a piano driven songs and adopting a self confessed “church voice” throughout, ‘White Chalk’ isn’t something to be taken lightly; not only is it an extraordinarily harrowing affair but it also marks fifteen years since the release of her debut album ‘Dry’ and is further proof, if any more were needed, that Polly Jean Harvey is not only an incredibly talented artist but also a genius of our time.

Despite the bleak and insular nature of ‘White Chalk’, PJ Harvey brings a stark realism to her music, which sucks you in to her world from the first note of the opening track ‘The Devil’. Sedate verses mixed with angst ridden, full blooded chorus; she leads the song through her oddly pitched, almost childlike vocal with the piano seeming to hang on her every breath. Each song reveals a vulnerable side to the character she inhibits throughout the album and so convincing is she, that the songs by their nature are often misconstrued as being of an autobiographical nature. Aching with hurt, the fragility and heartbreak of  ‘Dear Darkness’ sounds like it’s being sung with Harvey’s last dying breath. It’s very rare that you come across an album that is strong enough to leave you numb after just two tracks.

Enjoyment isn’t an appropriate word to use when describing ‘White Chalk’ yet the windswept fragility brought to life through ‘Grow Grow Grow’, the poignant guitar and frightening honesty in the title track and the minimal ‘Broken Harp’, which reads like a desperate open letter, keep you listening and wanting more. Harvey puts so much emotion into her vocal performance that she sounds drained of energy and dangerously exposed, yet the mood she creates is extremely contagious; in effect, by listening to ‘White Chalk’ you get your fix of pain through someone else’s suffering. Innocently blunt and hauntingly addictive, ‘Silence’ adds depth to it’s complex simplicity through an extremely quiet, short-lived and straightforward shuffling beat akin to an unending freight train rattling past, filling the empty spaces between the emotionally charged piano and stunning crystalline vocal.

In parts, ‘White Chalk’ is eerie and otherworldly such as the deep and tumultuous ‘To Talk To You’ but PJ Harvey isn’t one to pull her punches or deal with hidden meanings and abstract lyrics on this album. It’s all exceptionally frank, painfully powerful and beautifully dark and she succeeds in picking you up by first throwing you down. With her preference for one instrument in particular, it’s rather apt that ‘The Piano’ is one of the most striking tracks on the album. Hugely descriptive, immensely direct, bigger in composition and noticeably busier in instrumentation than the rest; it’s power, nestled amongst the sparser tracks, is accentuated all the more by its relative lack of minimalism. As with the following track, ‘Before Departure’ (which sounds something like a shock reaction to the discovery of a suicide note) it becomes apparent that Harvey uses her piano as much as her vocal to convey her thoughts and feelings and she need not always rely on her lyrics and her words.

‘White Chalk’ is brought to an end with ‘The Mountain’ and if this were a film, it would be right at this point that you’d burst into tears. Staying true to the previous ten tracks, ‘The Mountain’ is shockingly magnificent but like the rest of the album it has a sinister history to it and like all of the songs manages to rip your heart out as soon as it finishes. ‘White Chalk’ is extremely un-nerving in parts and goes someway in exposing a personal void and once it finishes, the silence is deafening; a pure and simple masterpiece.