PJ Harvey
White Chalk

'Dear Darkness'

PJ sits at the piano, surrenders to the stream of consciousness, and with a new voice, she touches new strings, new instruments, new unexplored angles. New worlds, otherworldly.

The tenth release under the name PJ Harvey is, once again, something unusual and drastic for Polly Jean and her listeners. The previous album, Uh Huh Her (2004), was a drawer full of intimate, warm, bluesy, and raw confessions, a self-celebratory summa of her musical journey, complete with a collection of self-portraits in the booklet.
This time, more determined than ever not to repeat herself, she abandons the electric guitar and the raspy screams in a corner, in search of the new, the unexplored, entrusting the compositional process to new instruments: harps, harmonicas, acoustic instruments, and the piano above all, capturing entirely unusual melodies and tones.
The desire to experiment brings to mind the albums To Bring You My Love ('95) and Is This Desire? ('98), and brings back longtime collaborators: Flood and John Parish.
Perhaps a risk, for someone who does not want to repeat herself, but even the voice is no longer the same.
Where do those airy soprano high notes, those intertwining spectral choirs come from?
Polly has stated that her new way of singing comes from the times she went to church with her grandmother, who recently passed away, to sing in the choir. The new work presents the usual dark influence, but this time more ethereal, spectral, funereal compared to the rough carnality of the previous ones. An album from the afterlife.

And it is precisely with a choir of spirits from the beyond that the album opens: the gothic march of 'The Devil' seems like the soundtrack of a Tim Burton film, evoking misty moors where on a moonless night, the devil takes possession of the soul of a poor 'gentle maiden' who madly calls her beloved: 'Come! Come! Come here at once!'.
'Dear Darkness' has a slow pace, a subdued dance with the dear friend darkness, faithful companion of many years to whom redemption is asked. In the chorus, guitar arpeggios are added to the piano along with the voice of another faithful friend, John Parish. The small moments of silence are moving.
'Grow Grow Grow', a bucolic metaphor of planted seeds, roses, and oaks, and a Polly who wants to grow and cries, while the reverberated piano draws a melancholic and dramatic Victorian lullaby.
In the next few minutes, the atmosphere becomes calmer, with the gentle and whispered 'When Under Ether', where a peaceful atmosphere is hinted at, a sweet smile under the effect of morphine, although the lyrics seem to refer to an abortion procedure: 'Something inside me, never born and never blessed, dissolves in ether, from this to the other world'. Accompanied by the anxious but barely audible percussion by Jim White of the Dirty Three, perfectly fitting.
The beloved landscapes of Dorset and the white chalk hills of Dover are the inspiration for the title-track, bright folk, light, with acoustic guitar, piano, and a glimpse of harmonica and banjo for a transported tribute to one's land. Echoes of voice between the hills and the sea.
Verses for voice alone open the shortest track, 'Broken Harp', at times supported by crooked acoustic arpeggios and later by an organ, a choir that ties with the past acoustic tracks. It flies away as it comes, bringing back the melancholy.
Another moment of light, with a punctuated piano and brushes on the snare drum, an exciting finale where the voice detaches from the confusion of timid verses, soaring into the air with a single word, prolonged and repeated, searching for one thing only: 'Silence'.
We follow the light and find ourselves in another dimension, 'To Talk To You', out of time, in a purgatory of dried flowers and dusty pianos from which a fragile prayer emerges: 'Oh grandmother, I miss you, underneath the heart I wish I was with you'. A suspended place where loved ones can be found again: 'If I lie on the ground, can you hear me?'.
The piano's leading role becomes apparent from the title of the macabre tale 'The Piano', where the instrument resembles a skeleton, and its strings are rattling tongues, the atmosphere returns to the gothic, with organ counterpoints by Eric Drew Feldman and unsettling counter-chants.
The murder ballad 'Before Departure' is the farewell letter of a suicidal person, featuring a cadenced and heartfelt refrain, the last funereal moment before the closing track, 'The Mountain'.
A whisper. Silence. The piano starts. The vocal lyricism evokes vast landscapes, on the mountain, there's an eagle flying and a soldier about to die, but the tones become bitter because the only thing that matters is that in Polly's heart there is great barrenness. The piano keys are hit more and more violently until piercing, uncontrolled screams of pain begin.

And, like the ghostly PJ depicted on the cover, this album possesses your soul.