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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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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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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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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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BlenderRefining 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]
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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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I can think of nothing more liberating than to dive into its dark waters.
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A poignant and powerful collection.
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This yet again reveals PJ Harvey to be one of the UK's greatest contemporary songwriters.
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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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White Chalk shifts between comforting melancholy and supremely discomforting performativity with preternatural ease.
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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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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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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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MojoIt's a brave and brilliant refocusing of her energies, virtually a rebirth. [Oct 2007, p.91]
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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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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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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 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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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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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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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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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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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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Q MagazineIt's so alluring you have no choice but to follow. [Oct 2007, p.98]
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It's stronger and more assertive than 2004's "Uh Huh Her."
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White Chalk, wholly self-contained and uncompromised, is a work of literary depth and complexity.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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As usual, the excellent mix--opaque but sunlit--helps; as usual, we eagerly await her next album.
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