PJ Harvey
White Chalk (Island)
By Emily Becker
Published: October 7th, 2007 | 10:49am
On White Chalk, PJ Harvey abandons her guitar for a piano, using minor keys, and adding a spooky lilt to her voice to tell stories of loss and family. While the songs may sound confessional, they are hardly the purgation of Harvey’s personal pain, but more likely the voices of personae she has created. As dark as the lyrics are, she orchestrates the music with such care that each song remains fluid and the intensity never becomes oppressive.
Harvey interconnects her songs using images from the cycle of life. On “Grow Grow Grow,” a seed is planted, singing: “into the earth I trampled it down/Grow, grow.” “When Under Ether” is a stark, honest description of the relief felt after an abortion, hauntingly referring to the seed of life: “something’s inside me/unborn and unblessed/disappears in the ether/this world to the next.”
While there are no explicit connections between songs, White Chalk references the idea of the unborn child many times, again the idea of the cycle of life. These notions are nothing new to Harvey, who took her “childbearing hips to a man who cares” in the song “Sheela Na Gig” off her 1992 album Dry. But White Chalk is less literal, instead weaving her ideas together with more subtlety.
It is White Chalk’s instrumentation, however, that ensures that the songs are innovative and memorable. While most start from piano, Harvey embellishes them with a wide variety of instruments including banjo, harp, cig Fiddle, and Optigan. Her stellar backing band includes frequent collaborators Jim White (Dirty Three, Cat Power), John Parish, and Eric Drew Feldman (Captain Beefheart). If there is any relief on the record, it comes from knowing that emotions, like chalk dust, are temporary, and there is always the hope for a clean slate.
Issue #28
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