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Harvey Plumbs Depths Of Despair On 'Chalk'

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By CURTIS ROSS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 29, 2007

On 2004's "Uh Huh Her," PJ Harvey did something she had never done before: She repeated herself. "Uh Huh Her" retreated to the jagged blues-rock of her earliest work, the first time a Harvey album failed to break new stylistic ground.

Given her amazing track record since 1992 debut "Dry," Harvey certainly could be allowed one slip. And with her new album, "White Chalk," Harvey has made one of the most startling moves of her career.

Gone is the serrated guitar that has been the bedrock of her sound, replaced by piano, around which most of these 11 songs are centered. Gone also is the brutal catharsis as well as any hint of romanticism. "White Chalk" is cloaked in despair. The songs describe a waking nightmare in which the horrors no longer lurk in the shadows but are ingrained in day-to-day existence.

Ghostly piano chords and, occasionally, skeletal guitar lines are the basis for these disturbing, first-person accounts of dread, despair and self-loathing. When Harvey pushes her voice into its upper register, the effect is chilling and animal-like.

It's hard to think of a precedent for an album this bleak - maybe Nico's "Desertshore" or "The Marble Index." But where those albums gave an epic quality to tales of madness, Harvey's terrors feel more mundane, more claustrophobic, but just as impossible to escape.

Granted, this isn't going to liven up any holiday parties, but "White Chalk" is a fascinating portrait of despair, an uneasy-listening classic.

Download this: "Grow Grow Grow"

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