P.J. Harvey, White Chalk
Featured Album
The femininity on display amplifies how harrowing her lyrics can be
The cover of White Chalk shows a harshly lit Harvey sitting in a white dress, as if she's posing for an overly formalized portrait; that overly lit feeling permeates the album, on which Harvey dispenses with the standard guitar-bass-drums rock setup in favor of piano (an instrument she taught herself during White Chalk's recording) and zither. Most of Harvey's catalog has a solid aural footing — even on the stripped-down tracks presented on 4-Track Demos, there's a grounding in the low end present that propels the overall musical action forward. But White Chalk has a lighter-than-air feeling about it, thanks to the timbre of the instrumentation, the lack of drums on many of the tracks, and Harvey's decision to sing in a higher register that plays up the innate girlishness of her voice. (This quality hasn't been as consistently prominent in Harvey's music since the release of Demonstration, the collection of demos that was packaged with the limited-edition run of Dry.) The femininity on display amplifies just how harrowing her lyrics can be; "When Under Ether" very clinically describes the feeling of euphoria one gets when anaesthetics kick in, while "The Piano" is a harrowing depiction of familial discord and loneliness that's marked by a chorus of ghostlike Harveys moaning, over and over, "Oh God, I miss you."
White Chalk closes with "The Mountain," a damnation of a straying lover that ends with Harvey, her voice in its highest register, wailing over arpeggios that reach higher and higher in a seeming effort to keep up with her enraged, ever-expanding voice. When it comes to an end, it almost seems that it did because Harvey's energy had been spent, thanks to exhaustion resulting from both her having to emotionally deal with the betrayal and desperately needing to provide herself with some sort of catharsis.
