If a single thread links PJ Harvey’s studio albums to date, it’s the unapologetically visceral expression of her Self. On her eighth, however, the presence of Britain’s most consistently compelling female songwriter – by a (west) country mile – is at times barely detectable, even though she’s clearly directing what sounds like a thoroughly reinvigorated muse.
‘White Chalk’ is as ghostly and wraith-like as the title suggests – the Whistler-style portrait of Harvey on the sleeve underlines that feeling – but it also constitutes Harvey’s most forceful artistic statement in years. These 11 hauntingly beautifully, exquisitely skeletal songs rely almost entirely on piano and voice (although peerless drummer Jim White and keys legend Eric Drew Feldman are on board), with not a note of her trademark eviscerated blues guitar in earshot. If this record has any stylistic empathies, they lie with the ‘new weird America’. Lead single, ‘When Under Ether’ and ‘To Talk To You’ are minor-chord masterpieces of melancholic solipsism, as unsettling as anything by Espers, while the sweetly wheezy title track recalls Iron And Wine. ‘Broken Harp’, however, is a lament of compelling, Victorian strangeness and mournful closer ‘The Mountain’ fragile as a Fabergé egg. Attuned to solitude and the small hours, this LP is really too special to share.
