‘Not having an immediate impact’ wasn’t an accusation that
could ever be levelled against White Chalk. It was as though the musical world was
minding its own business, felt a tap on the shoulder, and turned round to be
faced with a ghost. Harvey abandoned her guitar for a piano and her vocal
gymnastics for a high-pitched wail, part child, part wraith, vocalising a set
of unsettling, inconclusive glimpses into realms of the uncanny that seemed to
be unanchored from time or place. It was utterly different from anything she,
or anyone, had done before. It was sui generis, somewhere between chamber music
and folk, but neither. PJH had triumphantly reasserted her claim as a musical
innovator, who never rested and who never let her audience relax completely
either.
Longstanding fans who’d been following the lady with the
guitar for years gulped and decided not to listen any more: not my reaction.
Chilly and unwelcoming as this aural landscape was, it was one I felt quite at
home in. I was exhilarated at her willingness to strike out into the unknown. Although
only the title track explicitly refers to the Dorset landscape, it was the
sense that that was where this music came from that hooked me. ‘White chalk
south against time/White chalk cutting down the sea at Lyme/I walk the valley
by the Cerne/On a path cut fifteen hundred years ago/And I know these chalk
hills will rot my bones’. If I’d wanted the tender, tough ‘The Desperate
Kingdom of Love’ from Uh Huh Her at my funeral, here was a song to join it.
No comments:
Post a Comment