All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

Observer Music Monthly

Nothing Harvey has done in the past, however, can prepare you for her eighth album, White Chalk, whose cover is as singular as the tunes therein.

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100

The Phoenix

White Chalk is more chamber music, and a dark chamber at that. The only flickers of light come from Harvey’s voice: high, airy, and imperiled as she weaves her echo-coated and darkly soulful spell till the story’s bleak finale.

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100

Slant Magazine

White Chalk, wholly self-contained and uncompromised, is a work of literary depth and complexity.

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The Onion (A.V. Club)

Harvey has one of the most forceful voices around, but here she relies on her silk-thin upper register to create a delicate album that skates across despair without ever quite sinking into it.

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musicOMH.com

Constantly brilliant. White Chalk is an amazing album, racked with beauty, stricken with fragility and haunted with something otherworldly.

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Hot Press

Beautiful, arcane, unsettling--and that's only the cover. White Chalk isn't so much a record, as a great effort at dragging you into another world.

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cokemachineglow

I can think of nothing more liberating than to dive into its dark waters.

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Filter

But without a doubt the change on White Chalk is steps beyond those we have seen from PJ in the past, which makes one question her intent.

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The Guardian

The austerity of Harvey's self-imposed constraints is uncompromising but rewarding; she forces herself out of her comfort zone, and takes the listener with her.

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No Ripcord

Harvey’s audio experiments are celebrated with the release of each new album. But I wonder what she would do without any limitations.

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The Wire

Harvey's new strategy has been successful although White Chalk might be something of a curio, it's certainly her most haunting work. [Oct 2007, p.60]

Q Magazine

It's so alluring you have no choice but to follow. [Oct 2007, p.98]

Boston Globe

The music is positively spectral, as if she's set up her sound board in the spaces where her absent lover, unborn child, and grandmother used to be.

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Dot Music

This yet again reveals PJ Harvey to be one of the UK's greatest contemporary songwriters.

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Village Voice

As usual, the excellent mix--opaque but sunlit--helps; as usual, we eagerly await her next album.

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Dusted Magazine

White Chalk shifts between comforting melancholy and supremely discomforting performativity with preternatural ease.

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All Music Guide

It rivals "Dance Hall at Louse Point" for its willingness to challenge listeners, but it's far removed from "Uh Huh Her," which was arguably more listenable but a lot less remarkable. In fact, this may be Harvey's most undiluted album yet.

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Billboard

Harvey's mostly bare arrangements, stark vocal delivery and razor-sharp lyrics add up to a poignant, haunting rumination on what makes--and breaks--a life

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Sputnikmusic

There's not a weak track here, and on close inspection each song could be singled out as a highlight if debased from the album.

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Uncut

An album of lonely beauty and piercing sorrow, White Chalk is P.J. Harvey back at the peak of her considerable powers.

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BBC collective

Even by her own unsettling standards, however, her seventh album is disturbing, a collection of smudged and spectral laments that appear to have been written before the invention of penicillin.

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Rolling Stone

It's stronger and more assertive than 2004's "Uh Huh Her."

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Delusions of Adequacy

A poignant and powerful collection.

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Mojo

It's a brave and brilliant refocusing of her energies, virtually a rebirth. [Oct 2007, p.91]

Drowned In Sound

With its bones on show and chest wide open, White Chalk may not be the greatest album of all time, it may not be to everyone's tastes, and it may not even be Polly’s finest. But let it and it'll haunt you.

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Prefix Magazine

This album will still take away the breath you aren't holding: It's at once bleak, aching, and insidiously beautiful.

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Spin

There's a coiled power here equal to Harvey's more muscular stuff. [Oct 2007, p.95]

New Musical Express

Frustratingly, though, White Chalk isn't consistent enough to be a classic PJ album, and if you're new to her music, this isn't the ideal place to start.

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PopMatters

White Chalk is as penetrating as the loudest, fiercest moments on previous albums, but less from moments of aggression than from a chilling atmosphere of restrained frenzy.

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Tiny Mix Tapes

Polly has always done well to play outside her comfort zone, and in doing so on this album, she crafts a reminder more effective than her return-to-form attempt on "Uh Huh Her."

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Under The Radar

The album will puzzle some fans with its uncharacteristic sound, but it will surely intrigue many more. [Fall 2007, p.73]

Pitchfork

On the right day, at the right time, the album's powerfully claustrophobic intimacy is more palatable; on the wrong day, at the wrong time, in the wrong frame of mind, White Chalk may be the longest half-hour in the world.

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Austin Chronicle

They're still about the classic Harvey tropes of repression and longing, but Chalk's fixated on death and madness, at times feeling claustrophobic in its emptiness.

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Paste Magazine

Put in context, White Chalk serves her purposes, much as Bruce Springsteen’s "Nebraska" served his. On initial listen, the album is not a step forward, nor is it a step back, but rather a lateral move intended to leave breathing room for her next attack.

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Blender

Refining the spare sound of her last studio album "Uh Huh Her," she herein presents an 11-part song cycle about loss, longing and wandering bereft through the moors. [Oct 2007, p.108]

Stylus Magazine

Over the course of eleven songs of grim predestination, virtually no modernizing or even identifying signposts are allowed to disturb the terrain.

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Entertainment Weekly

On the largely piano-based White Chalk, she retreats into an odd little-girl-lost persona, singing almost entirely in a tremulous higher key that strangles the most powerful instrument in her arsenal: that voice.

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NOW Magazine

The painful White Chalk is either a studio experiment gone horribly wrong or a crafty bit of career self-sabotage by a sensitive artist who'd rather make sculptures in the desert than play pop star.

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What Our Users Said

The average user rating for this album is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 59 User Votes

Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

John R gave it a9:
This is PJs inevitable mind-control over her fans. We wait with bated breath for the next album, only to believe we've been horribly wronged upon the first listen. Then, just when you're resolved to throw the album off of the roof, you find that the music has settled deep within you. White Chalk is no different.

Jyotirmaya Das gave it a7:
Stark and yet very engaging. Sounds like it could have used more background music to give it a fuller sound.... but one senses that Ms. Harvey purposefully decided against that. It's a rebirth...an self-serving assessment of her own creativity. That being said Polly Jean Harvey has released a good album that I only listen to either very early while still in bed or late at night while falling asleep...

Alan Koslowski gave it a6:
A marginal improvement over Uh-Huh Her because it's more cohesive. It's a successful, but undeniably modest album. The minimalist piano musical landscape works, but is so spare and unambitious it's not very compelling. The relentlessly mournful songwriting is so understated (for the most part) even at just over 30 min becomes tedious after the first few songs. Harvey is always at her best when she's emphatic and cogent, and at her worst when eloquent and understated. This album is clearly the latter. Even though it's only her second release in 7 years, maybe she should go on hiatus until she finds the motivation to make a truly compelling album.

Damon Mitchell gave it a10:
I haven't had my heart so beautifully broken in a long time. This feels like the end of a trilogy in "Stories from..." she was in love with a boy and America, in "Uh Huh Her" the love affair was over but she had enough anger and fire to spit about it, in "White Chalk" the fire is out and it's an empty place where what's left really resonates.

Niamh OH gave it a9:
an excellent piece. she's outdone herself and surprised us all once again. niamh thewhiteponystolemyheart.blogspot.com

rocco cavaliere gave it an8:
Great album...but, is she pj? Really?

Patrick Wheeler gave it a9:
Not since Rid Of Me in the early nineties has a PJ album struck a chord so strongly with me. I am roughly the same age as Polly and she seems to be in the same head space as me right now. So few artists have the guts to be this honest and not worry about upsetting fans who expect reiteration. Only To Bring You My Love is a more complete album. If you haven't heard Polly before get TBYML, then: Is This Desire?, then White Chalk.

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