Harvey’s playing is subtle it’s mostly simple and metronomic, pulsed chords, as though a lavender-scented crow is watching attentively, tapping out the rhythm on the floor with her cane.
It summons ghosts of the social mores and graces of drawing rooms and freezing church halls. When playing the piano you have to give in to it, you are physically encumbered by the instrument’s sheer size. The guitar is synonymous with freedom and aggression, be it the travelling blues hobo or the sexual posturing axe man (roles PJ Harvey has adopted and radically feminised with great aplomb). Themes of resignation and defeatism hang thick through the album like the smell of damp in a Victorian drawing room this seems apt as her decision to change from guitar to piano seems less about investigating sound than about regressing into a former life. These cliffs are White Chalk, PJ Harvey’s eighth studio album. Hope is futile and there is no resolve other than to yield to a greater power. These cliffs are fragile and porous: slowly crumbling, eroding and falling apart, beaten by a relentless sea. These are not the iconic white cliffs of Dover, a symbol of hope and British solidarity. And all accompanied by the cold tempestuous brine crashing against the bleached-bone cliffs. The elements churn, the metallic scent of electricity fills the air, and the salty breeze snakes around your body to mottle your face with frost. Nowhere is this manifest more vividly than on the coasts. Once-inviting parks and streets seethe with the threat of crime when cloaked in darkness and loam grey clouds blanket the sky. People shed their summer livery to step reluctantly into their monochrome uniforms. The celebratory crowds that accumulated outside the bars and pubs dissipate and disband. A shadow descends over the UK during autumn.
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