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White Chalk

Record Details

Release
2007

White Chalk is PJ Harvey’s eighth album. The eleven songs were recorded in West London and co-produced by Harvey, Flood and John Parish. The album features performances from Eric Drew Feldman and Jim White of the Dirty Three.

Recording followed the 2006 release of ‘PJ Harvey: The Peel Sessions’, a collection of Harvey’s recordings for the veteran broadcaster spanning her whole career. That year also saw the release of ‘PJ Harvey On Tour: Please Leave Quietly’, Harvey’s first DVD.

Recent live shows have included a performance at the Manchester International Festival, the Hay-On-Wye festival and at the New Yorker Festival.

From the outset, PJ Harvey has commanded attention. She formed the bass / drums / guitar trio in 1991 in Dorset, England and by autumn had released the debut single, ‘Dress’, on independent label Too Pure. With a second single, ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’, in February 1992, Harvey had begun an impressive critical climb, which set the stage for a highly anticipated album release the following month. ‘Dry’ was hailed as an astonishing debut, not just in the UK but worldwide and especially in the United States, where Rolling Stone named Harvey Best Songwriter and Best New Female Singer.

In 1993, PJ Harvey signed to Island Records and began work on a follow-up album. The band went into the studio with Steve Albini in Minneapolis and the resulting album, ‘Rid Of Me’, was released in early ’93. The album was supported by a lengthy world tour, drawing increasingly wide audiences and Harvey’s first Mercury Prize nomination.
The original trio dissolved and Harvey’s solo work ‘4-Track Demos’ was released in the autumn of 1993, which comprised of 14 songs, a mixture of unreleased material and Harvey’s own demos for ‘Rid Of Me’.

‘To Bring You My Love’ followed in 1995, an eclectic and starkly original album. She enlisted a variety of musicians to play on the album, including John Parish (who co-produced along with Flood and Harvey), keyboardist Eric Drew Feldman, guitarist Joe Gore and Bad Seed, Mick Harvey. The tour which followed saw Harvey explore a theatrical edge to her live performance. She received her second nomination for the Mercury Music Prize and was nominated for two Grammies, received ‘1995 Artist Of The Year’ awards from Rolling Stone and Spin and gained album of the year acknowledgements across the board.

Recording her fifth album,’ Is This Desire?’ in London and Dorset, Harvey once again co-produced the album with Flood. It was released in September ’98 and featured 12 new tracks. It attracted plaudits on both sides of the Atlantic and gained nominations for The Brits and The Grammy Awards.

‘Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’, the much anticipated follow-up to ‘Is This Desire?’ was released in October 2000. The album, produced and performed by PJ Harvey, Rob Ellis and Mick Harvey, picked up the Mercury Music Prize in 2001, the first album by a female artist to win the award. Described by the NME as “a magnificent, life-affirming opus” ‘Stories…’ was supported by a lengthy world-wide sellout tour.

‘Uh Huh Her’ followed the hugely successful ‘Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’. After a summer of live dates – including appearances at the V Festival, the Eden Project and the first rock concert at Tate Modern – Harvey finished work on ‘Uh Huh Her’ in the autumn of 2003. The album was written, performed, recorded, mixed and produced by Harvey, who chose Head to assist in additional recording and mixing and Rob Ellis, long time collaborator, to play drums and percussion on the album. Multi-instrumentalist Harvey played everything else.

Extra-curricular projects include soundtrack work on ‘Basquiat’, ‘Stella Does Tricks’, ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ & ‘Six Feet Under’ and an appearance as Mary Magdalene in Hal Hartley movie ‘The Book Of Life’. In 1996 she worked with John Parish on the album ‘Dance Hall At Louse Point’ where her words accompanied the music of John Parish for both the album and a live accompaniment to the Mark Bruce Dance Company production of the same name. A follow up collaboration with Parish is set to appear in 2008. She has collaborated with an extraordinary range of musicians, duetting with Thom Yorke, Nick Cave, Tricky, Howe Gelb of Giant Sand, Pascal Comelade, Gordon Gano of Violent Femmes and appearing on Sparklehorse album ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’.

More recently, she joined Queen’s of the Stoneage’s Josh Homme on his critically acclaimed ‘Desert Sessions’ project [2003] and worked with Mark Lanegan (also of QOSTA) on his recent solo album. Harvey produced the debut album by American artist Tiffany Anders and also wrote, recorded & produced material for Marianne Faithfull’s last album ‘Before The Poison’. In addition to her musical career Harvey has exhibited sculpture in galleries across the country and has had poetry published.

– July 2007

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Record Links

Record Tracklist

  1. The Devil
    The Devil

    As soon as I am left alone
    the devil wanders into my soul
    and I pretend to myself –
    I pretend to myself

    I go out to the old mile-stone
    insanely expecting you to come there
    knowing that I wait for you there –
    that I wait for you there

    Come here at once!
    Come on a night with no moon
    because all of my being is now pining –
    all of my being is now pining

    What formerly cheered me now seems insignificant

  2. Dear Darkness
    Dear Darkness

    Won’t you cover me again? Dear Darkness, I’ve been your friend for many years…
    Won’t you do this for me dearest Darkness? Cover me from the sound of the words tightening around my throat and around the throat of the one I love…the tightening, tightening, tightening.

    Dear Darkness – now it’s your turn to look after us, because we kept you clothed and we kept you in business when everyone else was having good luck. So now it’s your time to pay – to pay me and the one I love with the worldly goods you stashed away –
    with all the things you took from us.

  3. Grow, Grow, Grow
    Grow, Grow, Grow

    I sowed a seed
    underneath the oak tree
    I trod it in
    with my boots I trampled it down

    grow, grow, grow, grow

    I sowed a rose
    underneath the oak grove
    with my boots on the ground
    into the earth I trampled it down

    grow, grow

    teach me mummy
    how to grow
    how to catch someone’s fancy
    underneath the twisted oak grove

  4. When Under Ether
    When Under Ether

    The ceiling is moving
    moving in time
    like a conveyor belt
    above my eyes

    When under ether
    the mind comes alive
    conscious of nothing
    but the will to survive

    I lay on the bed
    waist down undressed
    look up at the ceiling
    feeling happiness

    Human kindness

    The woman beside me
    is holding my hand
    I point at the ceiling
    she smiles so kind

    Something’s inside me
    unborn and unblessed
    disappears in the ether
    this world to the next

    Human kindness

  5. White Chalk
    White Chalk

    White chalk hills are all I’ve known
    White chalk hills will rot my bones
    White chalk sticking to my shoes
    White chalk playing as a child with you

    White chalk south against time
    White chalk cutting down the sea at Lyme
    I walk the valleys by the Cerne
    on a path cut fifteen hundred years ago

    and I know these chalk hills will rot my bones

    Dorset’s cliffs meet at the sea
    where I walked, our unborn child in me
    White chalk, gorse-scattered land
    scratch my palms – there’s blood on my hands

  6. Broken Harp
    Broken Harp

    Please don’t reproach me
    for how empty
    my life has become

    I don’t know what really happened
    I watched your disappointment
    at being misunderstood

    I forgive you

    Something metal
    is tearing my stomach out
    if you think ill of me

    Can you forgive me too?

    I tried to learn your language
    but fell asleep half undressed
    unrecognisable to myself

  7. Silence
    Silence

    All those places where I recall
    the memories that grip me and pin me down,
    I go to these places pretending to think –
    I can think of nothing, but anticipate

    that you’ll find me there –
    that by some miracle you’d be aware.

    I’d risen this morning determined to break
    the spell of my longing, and not to think.
    I freed myself from my family, I freed myself from work,
    I freed myself, and remained alone…

    and in my thinking steal you away –
    though you never wanted me anyway.

    Silence. Silence. Silence.

  8. To Talk to You
    To Talk to You

    Oh grandmother, how I miss you
    under the earth – I wish I was with you

    to talk to you

    I found somebody I tried to give myself to –
    many times I wanted to talk to you

    If I lay on the earth could you hear?

    Oh grandmother, I’m so lonely
    all my life

    If I lay on the earth could you hear?

  9. The Piano
    The Piano

    Hit her with a hammer
    teeth smashed in
    red tongues twitching
    look inside a skeleton

    My fingers sting
    where I feel your fingers have been
    ghostly fingers
    moving my limbs

    Oh god I miss you!

    Daddy’s in the corner
    rattling his keys
    mummy’s in the doorway
    trying to leave

    Nobody’s listening

  10. Before Departure
    Before Departure

    Farewell my friends
    Farewell my dear ones
    If I was rude
    forgive my weakness

    Goodbye my friends
    Goodbye to evening parties
    Remember me
    in the spring

    Work for your bread
    Soon we must leave
    Remember your families
    and work for your children

    I don’t need much
    and the older I become
    I realise
    my friendships

    will carry me over
    any cause of strangeness
    and any cause of distance
    The friends that last

    will dance one more time
    with me
    I don’t need much
    but this I need

  11. The Mountain
    The Mountain

    Above the mountain
    an eagle is flying

    High above the mountain
    an eagle is calling down
    to the soldier who falters
    a soldier on the ground

    By the mountain I feel nothing
    for in my own heart every tree is broken –

    the first tree will not blossom
    the second will not grow
    the third has almost fallen
    since you betrayed me so

  12. Wait (iTunes Bonus Track)