Well, I have just listened (twice through) to the new
PJ Harvey album, White Chalk. Below, a few impressions.
The first is the album artwork. Which I like very much. Pared-down, tasteful, attention-grabbing, unpretentious. And I am an unashamed doter upon uncoated card (rough, textured, matt).
With the opening track, the first thing I think of - curiously, and rather unexpectedly - is the
Beach Boys. It's not quite 'I Get Around', I know. But there's a tightness and buoyancy to the opening piano chords that's oddly reminiscent. In general, PJ Harvey's piano playing is very interesting.
In some ways it reminds me of listening to untaught pianists at school, playing pop songs on the Chapel piano. (Yes, my school had a chapel. My school had a whole lot of things that its senior management considered badges of gravitas, respectability and grandeur.) PJH approaches the piano, somehow, as if for the first time. That is, on this album, she seems to tap into a sort of pianistic naivety - sees the instrument's potential in a manner unclouded by formal lessons and classical techniques.
Piano is explored, on White Chalk, as a 'new' instrument. Technically, the playing is generally fairly simplistic - but that's really not the point. At intervals, we hear it played as if it were a palm-muted guitar (tight, repeating chords, no cross-rhythms, deliberately dampened), 'strummed', and playing simple, lovely figures such as the spidery, gossamer opening of 'Dear Darkness' (complemented sensitively by the feather-light brushed drums later in the track).
I think of Kid A/Amnesiac-era
Radiohead quite a bit when listening to this album. Which might not always be auspicious ... but, in this case, is. In the excellent 'Grow Grow Grom' (one of the standout tracks), for instance, an irregular time-signature is not employed through clever-clever 'I can count better than you' gimmickry, but is integral to the song, and justified by it. This reminds me of Radiohead's 'Pyramid Song'.
... More than of Radiohead, I think of
Smashing Pumpkins - specifically, Adore (easily my favourite of that band's albums, and underappreciated generally). The link may be partly explained by the fact that both Adore and White Chalk are characterised by a move from guitar towards the more unfamiliar piano.
... But most of all, I think of early 20th century composers – primarily
Benjamin Britten, but also
Ralph Vaughan Williams. In songs such as 'Grow Grow Grom' and 'Silence', there's a colouristic use of harmony - by which I mean that unusual chords enter the music not so much to carry it foward into new areas, but to add vibrant, unexpected splashes of new colour. A previously minor chord in a sequence may become major, say, yet not affect the rest of the sequence (as it would in 'classical' harmony). In 'Grow Grow Grom', there are some beautiful shifts of key centre (as opposed to key changes), which seems to me very Britten-esque. And the whole song is characterised by a persistent shifting back and forth between two chords (two colours) that don't quite go together - but don't clash. It is delicate, intelligent, efficient and - above all - painterly writing - sparse and moving, with every element contributing to the whole.
'Broken Harp' is only 1:59 long (I applaud the brevity of many of these songs - in tune with the minimalist instrumentation, songs are never allowed to venture anywhere near the gratuitous or the expansive). It sounds
old. Like an English folk song. And, like good folk, it manages simultaneously to sound fragile, delicate - almost brittle - and incredibly
robust. Later in the song (and not for the first time on the album), the vocals lean in the direction of
Bjork.
'Broken Harp' and the immediately following three tracks ('Silence', 'To Talk To You' and 'The Piano') are brilliant, together (and, no doubt, independently also). 'Silence', with its pulsing piano, seems to drive forward, but the persistently descending chordal figures contradict this momentum; and 'To Talk To You' employs a different kind of polarity, with very high, tremulous vocals set against a muffled, bass-heavy, "sluggish" piano sound. There are qualities of
Tori Amos's 'Bells for Her' (a great song), with its treated piano sounds, imparting an exotic, bell-like, slightly ring-modulated quality – vaguely reminiscent of
Gamelan, somehow. The whole song ('To Talk to You') sounds at times as if it's been recorded on an old, degraded tape. The vibrato effect on vocals and piano creates a fantastic texture that is astonishingly tangible-seeming - makes me feel as though I could almost run my finger along the serrated edge of the sound, like stroking the blades of a comb.
Then 'The Piano' picks up momentum, with strange, excellent trilling figures making darting flights and retreats onto another pulsing, tapping piano/percussion background. Then we hear the lyric "Rattling his keys" – and realise that these trills were superb anticipatory word-painting of an entirely non-gratuitous kind.
It's a fantastic song - powerful and evocative, disturbing ... After which, the sinking, melancholic piano motif of 'Before Departure' acts as a very well-judged relief-giver and palate/palette-cleanser. Again, there's that folky, Vaughan-Williams/Britten-esque quality.
PJH's use of the upper reaches of her vocal range is very effective, throughout the album. But when I got to the final stages of 'The Mountain' (the album's closing track), I was amazed. The unrooted, meandering character of the early stages of the song gives way to an extraordinary (and I don't use the word lightly) collage of arpeggios, top-of-range and soaring vocals. This is brilliant - not over-the-top - for two reasons: it does not drag or become 'epic'; and the new vocal quality is underpinned -- more, it is
justified -- by an accompanying shift into new harmonic territories, with unexpected and extreme key-changes (or key-shifts, perhaps) appearing in sudden abundance. Without this harmonic adventurousness, the vocals might seem gratuitous; with them, the result is an inspired album-closer.
To return to my opening comments on the album artwork: after you've listened to the disc, you realise how beautifully the packaging design mirrors the music itself. Somewhat stark, spartan, poised - reined back, almost ... But simultaneously earthy, textured, organic and 'real'. Despite all the 'whiteness', there's also a warmth to the artwork (heightened magenta and yellow, at the expense of cold blue tones) that emulates the warmth of the album's acoustic instrumentation.
Aesthetically, this is a brilliant album, on first impressions.
Tom
Cogwheel Dogs
Benjamin Britten
