I want to write about the music I like so I can't ignore and leave aside a record that has stricken me in a special way. It's the record "White Chalk" of my beloved P.J. Harvey, i.e. Polly Jean Harvey, songwriter made in Dorset. It's a very intimate and personal record in which the singer shows herself naked and expresses her tormented and tormenting feelings - Enzo Ferrari defined in this way the Argentine pilot Carlos Reutemann. It's a record in which the personal life and the feelings of the author take advantage on the intention of being loved by the public. It's a music, in my personal point of view, that she has composed for herself in a moment when she felt a desperate need to express her pain, her discouragement and regret. This record was released in 2007, almost three years after the careless "Uh Huh Her", and it's an element of truth and breaking point. She needs no histrionic behaviors or disguise to attract the attention, nor she needs to use provocative or ambiguous lyrics. In this album we find 11 songs, each one in its uniqueness is a jewel. It is composed for voice and piano, but the voice prevails over the arrangements that are very well done and complex. There are also acoustic and electronic instruments that the same PJ plays. It's a voice that intrigues and softly tears apart, starts with acute notes and little by little reveals the feelings of the author that has recently broke up with the man of her life and that suffered the death of her granny.
It's a record that requires a careful listening and that must be digested, you have to love melancholy music though. The recording is fine but not audiophile with a good articulation of the sound that in my Hi Fi components sounded colored and lively. Among the tracks I want to point out "Before Departure" a suicide farewell letter "The Mountain" with a music and vocal crescendo. "To Talk To You" dedicated to the lamented granny . "The Piano" with its sober but meaningful lyrics. This record is in catalogue also in its LP version.
