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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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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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White Chalk, wholly self-contained and uncompromised, is a work of literary depth and complexity.
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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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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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Constantly brilliant. White Chalk is an amazing album, racked with beauty, stricken with fragility and haunted with something otherworldly.
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I can think of nothing more liberating than to dive into its dark waters.
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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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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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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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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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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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It's stronger and more assertive than 2004's "Uh Huh Her."
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A poignant and powerful collection.
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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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MojoIt's a brave and brilliant refocusing of her energies, virtually a rebirth. [Oct 2007, p.91]
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White Chalk shifts between comforting melancholy and supremely discomforting performativity with preternatural ease.
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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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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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As usual, the excellent mix--opaque but sunlit--helps; as usual, we eagerly await her next album.
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The WireHarvey'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]
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Q MagazineIt's so alluring you have no choice but to follow. [Oct 2007, p.98]
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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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This yet again reveals PJ Harvey to be one of the UK's greatest contemporary songwriters.
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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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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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SpinThere's a coiled power here equal to Harvey's more muscular stuff. [Oct 2007, p.95]
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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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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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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 RadarThe album will puzzle some fans with its uncharacteristic sound, but it will surely intrigue many more. [Fall 2007, p.73]
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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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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.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 82 out of 99
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Mixed: 7 out of 99
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Negative: 10 out of 99
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DamonMitchellNov 13, 2007
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PatrickWheelerNov 6, 2007
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RyanOct 30, 2007