PJ Harvey - White Chalk Review
by Dan MacIntosh
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After you listen to PJ Harvey's White Chalk CD for the first time, you may think somebody deceptively slipped the wrong disc into its sleeve. After all, who is this pretty-voiced girl and why is she surrounded by so much foreign acoustic piano, instead of electric guitar? As a sanity check, you might be half-tempted to take a second gander at the album packaging. 'Hmm, the plain Jane girl in the pure white dress sure doesn't look like the wild-eyed Harvey you know.' Instead, she appears like some TV extra on the old Little House on the Prairie show. It's a joke, right? But to your amazement, this is no joke. Ladies and gentlemen, meet new (and improved?) PJ Harvey.
White Chalk is not the every-hair-out-of-place woman featured on Rid of Me, the sunglasses-wearing sexpot starlet of 4-Track Demos, or the drowning woman on To Bring You My Love. Harvey has always majored in angst, much like a female version (and sometimes duet partner) of Nick Cave, with guitars roaring and vocals blaring. But not now. This CD finds Harvey greatly cranking down the volume and reinventing her image. She's become the quiet, shy type. Geez, whodathunkit?
The track "Grow Grow Grow", with its upfront piano trills, seemingly gives voice to this project's tight-lipped, sad cover girl. "Teach me mommy to grow/How to catch some man's fancy," she begs naively. It's the longing of a young woman who fears becoming an old maid. She is by no means a confident lady out to conquer the man of her dreams, that's for sure. Instead, she's highly mother-dependant, craving the secrets of how to exude feminine sexuality – assuming, of course, she even has any inherent sexiness. As is readily apparent, White Chalk is peopled with troubled souls. "Broken Harp" opens with the line, "Please don't reproach me for how empty my life has become." On "The Piano", the chorus repeats the line "Nobody's listening", followed by the next repeated phrase, "Oh God, I miss you." The aging young girl in "Grow Grow Grow", the apologetic lady in "Broken Harp", and the lonely gal in "The Piano" are all hopeless cases. All pretty, all pathetic.
There has always an unbreakable link between romance and spirituality. But in Harvey's case, spirituality is usually of the more evil variety. She is primarily concerned with escaping Satan's clutches, rather than finding God's open-armed love. White Chalk begins with the one-two pitchfork poke of "The Devil" and "Dear Darkness".
In the few places where piano doesn't take instrumental center stage, acoustic guitar – though not electric axes – take its place. The title track, for instance, is backed by mournfully strummed six-strings as Harvey's voice is bathed in studio echoes. This one also includes just a tad of harmonica coloring. But piano is nevertheless integral to Harvey's tunes, exemplified by the one simply titled "The Piano".
It's been said that if you really want to get someone's attention, just whisper. And PJ Harvey's White Chalk proves this quiet point with hushed assurance. She may not be screaming manically, as she has so alarmingly done in the past, but her pretty little whispers speak to listeners clearly and profoundly.
PJ Harvey is to be saluted for boldly screwing with her audience's expectations. Just when you thought you knew the real Harvey, White Chalk puts any and all initial assumptions in severe doubt. So chalk one up for PJ.
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PJ Harvey - White Chalk
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