PJ Harvey
White Chalk

Who knows what the furious Polly of old would have said if she could travel through time and observe the movements of the new Pj: a schoolgirl, asking for penance for all her wrongdoings. Who knows how Polly would have reacted to the new lyrics, which no longer speak of men Polly wants to tear apart, but of dark feelings, like eagles hovering over the dead bodies of soldiers. The new poetics of the new Polly culminates in a rosary divided into eleven amulets, imposed as a seal of art.

Is Polly now a saint? A schoolgirl? A faithful great-granddaughter of Emily Dickinson? Perhaps, but what matters are the words and music contained therein. I have never managed to hold back tears in front of these splendid compositions, which often do not exceed 3 minutes. They are simple, but not tame. They are meat on the fire that becomes ghostly.

"Please don’t scold me for how empty my life has become/ I really don’t know what happened/ I watched your disappointment until it became incomprehensible/ I forgive you/ Or something metallic is ripping my stomach away/ If you think ill of me, can you forgive me?/ I tried to learn your language/ But I fell asleep half-naked/ Unrecognizable to myself" [Broken Harp]

The style is completely overturned, even in the lyrics: Polly Jean also overturns her role. If once it was she who demanded respect, now she asks for it. She asks for forgiveness through tearing verses. Perhaps talking about a love disappointment or maybe the fear of being punished by God.

What matters is that in this album Pj Harvey has put everything and nothing.

She forsakes electric guitars, forsakes malice (a specter of the past reappears in the beautiful "Grow Grow Grow", but it's an isolated event), seeking refuge in the echoes of the most melancholic and austere folk, with only the support of the piano and some other barely accentuated instrument.

Under her poetic flair are hidden eulogies to the devil, to God, to a dead grandmother, to a hypothetical boyfriend. Without overlooking the family and its complicated relationships ("Dad's in the corner playing with the keys/ Mom's at the entrance trying to leave - No one listening" whispers Pj Harvey in the anguishing primordial echo of "The Piano"), the perdition of ego and one's soul through ambiguous phrases of lost love ("When you're under ether/The mind wakes up/but the awareness of nothing/The instinct of survival/I'm spread on the bed/Undressed from the waist down/Looking at the ceiling/ And I feel happy) and elegies towards an impending darkness, seen as a lover or perhaps as a submissive power (Dear Darkness/Do you want to cover me again?/Dear Darkness/I've been your friend for years/Do you want to do it with me?/Dearest darkness/Shelter me from the sun under the words being written/The words strangling around my throat).

It's a new Pj, purer, more adult, more mature, who after the explosive turn of a raw and amazing "Uh Huh Her" decided to record something intimate and polished. Songs of anguish and pain, so tremendously autumnal, that if listened to in summer, the season of joy par excellence, they almost bring unease.

The fingers run on the piano without daring to violate it, as Diamanda Galas would, without suddenly bringing out a demon as Nick Cave would. No.

She wants to be submissive to the devil, as she sings in the initial, stunning, and minimalist "The Devil." Letting go into post-realist fairy tales ("Grow Grow Grow"), Harvey writes her best melodies.

She may have changed too much, but this Polly continues to move me.

"Struck by a hammer/Teeth shattered inside/Tearing away the red tongue/I look inside your skeleton/The fingers pluck/Where I feel your fingers rested/Spectral fingers/That move my limbs" [The Piano]