Amazon.co.uk Review
The Polly Jean Harvey you hear on
White Chalk is not the wild harpy you heard gnashing and wailing on "Sheela-Na-Gig", or the urbane punk stateswoman of 2000’s
Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. No, this is another evolution in her singular career--one that sees electric guitar banished to the cobwebbed attic, tight cat-suit covered over by Victorian gown, and Polly’s yearning vocals sounding strangely removed, like they’re being broadcast from another, distant age. Piano is the primary instrument here, augmented by occasional, dusty sounding guitar or other, more esoteric stringed instruments--a sparse, limited musical canvas that places the emphasis on song and lyrics. And while initially, they seem foreboding and slow to open up, repeated spins reveal this to be a set of ghostly power and eerily timelessness. "Dear Darkness" is spacious and supremely measured, Harvey singing of words "tightening around the throat of the one I love", while the harp-accompanied "Grow Grow Grow" is impossibly highly-strung, its pain buttoned-up in constricting corsets and tight bows. Only on the closing "The Mountain" does she approach the cathartic anger of her previous work. But then,
White Chalk is something else entirely--an icy English gothic that’s powerful in its choked restraint.
--Louis Pattison
CD Description
Seventh album from Yeovil's premier cult indie heroine follows 2004's 'Uh Huh Her' and marks a startling change of direction. Based almost entirely around stark, minimal, repetitive piano and organ figures and featuring almost no guitars or percussion at all, the album stands at the intersection between contemporary classical and Victorian American vaudeville. Sounding like it was recorded a hundred years ago, it proves once again that Polly Jean Harvey is an artist totally out there on her own.
