Track Listing

1. The Devil
2. Dear Darkness
3. Grow Grow Grow
4. When Under Ether
5. White Chalk
6. Broken Harp
7. Silence
8. To Talk To You
9. The Piano
10. Before Departure
11. The Mountain
12. Splash Page Live Link

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2833 in Music
• Released on: 2007-09-24
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Enhanced
• Running time: 33 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Polly Jean Harvey you hear on White Chalk is not the wild harpy you heard gnashing and wailing on "Sheela-Na-Gig", or the urbane punk stateswoman of 2000’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. No, this is another evolution in her singular career--one that sees electric guitar banished to the cobwebbed attic, tight cat-suit covered over by Victorian gown, and Polly’s yearning vocals sounding strangely removed, like they’re being broadcast from another, distant age. Piano is the primary instrument here, augmented by occasional, dusty sounding guitar or other, more esoteric stringed instruments--a sparse, limited musical canvas that places the emphasis on song and lyrics. And while initially, they seem foreboding and slow to open up, repeated spins reveal this to be a set of ghostly power and eerily timelessness. "Dear Darkness" is spacious and supremely measured, Harvey singing of words "tightening around the throat of the one I love", while the harp-accompanied "Grow Grow Grow" is impossibly highly-strung, its pain buttoned-up in constricting corsets and tight bows. Only on the closing "The Mountain" does she approach the cathartic anger of her previous work. But then, White Chalk is something else entirely--an icy English gothic that’s powerful in its choked restraint. --Louis Pattison

CD Description
Seventh album from Yeovil's premier cult indie heroine follows 2004's 'Uh Huh Her' and marks a startling change of direction. Based almost entirely around stark, minimal, repetitive piano and organ figures and featuring almost no guitars or percussion at all, the album stands at the intersection between contemporary classical and Victorian American vaudeville. Sounding like it was recorded a hundred years ago, it proves once again that Polly Jean Harvey is an artist totally out there on her own.

Customer Reviews

Will the real P.J. Harvey please stand up..........again
Finally, four albums later, I'm enthralled by the wonderous P.J. Harvey once more.
I thought her special brand of genius had been dulled but White Chalk is a return to total form and an utter joy.
Dry, Rid Of Me and Four-Track demos were three of my all time favourites but I haven't truly connected with anything of PJ's since then.
I'm not suggesting the last 4 albums were bad but, for me, they had lost the "edge" I really loved in her music.
Suddenly.....wallop....here is White Chalk. I first heard "When Under Ether" and "The Piano" on the radio without knowing who it was and fell in love with them almost immediately. Totally different and very much "out-there", this is quite a departure and all the better for it.
My joy is rekindled.

This album is exceptional.

I'm so very pleased :)

A Voice in the Dark
"A voice comes to one in the dark.
Imagine."

Samuel Beckett (Company 1980).

....and here we have the voice of Polly Harvey. Stripped Bare.

Like the old woman in the rocking chair in Beckett's 'Rockaby';
alone listening to the cracked sound of her own voice.
Memory. Longing. Loss. Hope. Futility.

This is indeed a dark place but a place without artifice. The intimacy
at times almost unbearable.

These 11 songs are an extraordinary addition to Ms Harvey's canon.
Compressed, fleeting evocations; almost suffocating at times in their intensity.

The mood of the album is sustained throughout without respite.

Simple piano/guitar accompaniment, supported by uncluttered additional
instrumentation and vocals. The production unintrusive.

'Dear Darkness', 'When Under the Ether', 'Silence', 'The Piano',
and the superlative 'The Mountain' just some of the highpoints
in a work of claustrophobic genius.

A highpoint in the career of this hugely talented woman.

A small masterpiece indeed.


"And how better in the end labour lost and silence.
And you as you always were.

Alone".


Samuel Beckett (Company 1980).

Ethereal in the truest sense
Most of the reviews of this album - both amateur and pro - have tended to focus on the effect rather than the content of these songs. It's true that the shift to piano and away from guitar is a departure, and her switch to a more ethereal vocal style may come as a surprise.

Yet ethereal is precisely what this album is. "When Under Ether" seems to recall an abortion endured semi-conscious while a child's life slips away into nothingness; in other songs she yearns for the companionship of the dead or or begs something unseen for forgiveness. She has "blood on her hands": the white chalk of her native Dorset hills sticks to her shoes. She laments her loss and pain like a banshee or a tragic Hardy heroine.

The haunting subject matter may be oblique to some, though the strange and swirling melodies and almost choral purity of her voice may bewitch those who have not encountered Harvey's music before. As an exploration of a particular kind of female agony, this set of songs is almost without parallel.