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  PJ Harvey - White ChalkBy Daniel JohnsonOctober 8, 2007 PJ Harvey has become Miss Havisham, and White Chalk is that Dickens character's one-woman musical. Havisham, the cruel old spinster fucking with Pip's flow in Great Expectations, had gone batty after being stood up at the alter in her youth. On White Chalk's funereal cover, Harvey plays the part of the doomed bride, slouching in the shadows in her ghostly white dress. She looks lovely and insane - and half dead - and it's easy to picture the cobwebs, rotting wedding cake and other detritus of unrequited matrimony lying just outside of frame. White Chalk features little instrumentation besides piano and sounds like it was recorded inside one. It's melancholy close-mic'd, full of squeaking gears and plucked tones and Harvey's reedy falsetto floats above it all like a screech played back at half speed. Harvey used to sound 50 feet tall; an Amazonian badass whose femininity never suffered from the swamp punk and come-to-Jesus blues. She was everybody's favorite fatally attracted songstress, wrestling her demons into a beautifully abrasive music that was its own kind of triumph. Now she just sounds defeated, like the rage has abandoned her and left despair in its place. Like Miss Havisham, who used her influence to spread her cynical cause, White Chalk is an abuse of Harvey's power: in this case, an artistry so compelling it's hard not to listen. The 11 songs of White Chalk have a gloom that won't quit and, no matter how delicately gorgeous they are, Harvey starts to resemble a relentlessly negative friend: you feel you should lend an ear but at some point so much toxicity just starts to bring you down. Let's hope Harvey pulls the curtains open on her music soon. After all, even Miss Havisham eventually let the light in.
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