The autumnal, eerie piano march that opens PJ Harvey’s White Chalk is anything but expected. When she last left us with Uh Huh Her the Harvey model was gritty, bluesy and tough. But she’s grown a knack for dodging expectations morphing from minimal guitar rock, to electonic experimentation, to slick ethereal pop ( Rid of Me, This is Desire, Stories from…).
How then, did she dissapear and re-emerge a figure of anachronistic Victorian desperation? Polly Jean might not be able to tell herself, but the results are nontheless hypnotic. Sparse piano, autoharp and percussion adorn somber tracks rich with haunting, Dickinsonian meditations on death and isolation.
Producer Flood (U2, Smashing Pumpkins) shows an unprecedented interest in keeping things simple to fascinating results. “When Under Ether” chugs along steadily like a Radiohead Kid A track in the 19th century. The title track is concerned with the landscape and not a body outline, “These chalk hills will rot my bones.” The closest she gets to optimism is “Grow Grow Grow”, which imagines boots stamping seeds into the ground, before the ghostly waltz erupts into cathedral-high falsetto. Just in time for the harvest.
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