Polly Jean Strikes Again!

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English musician and songwriter, PJ Harvey, released her eighth studio album, White Chalk, on Tuesday September 24th and critics are giving it excellent reviews. The music is ethereal and takes you into another world--and a dark world at that. It might not be her best album, but it's definitely like nothing she's done before.

For the past 15 years, Harvey has been one of the boldest artists of rock. She is constantly reinventing herself, perhaps because she's uncomfortable in her own skin. But this is exactly why I love her. She's been known in the past to take on different personas, such as with her 1995 album To Bring You My Love, in which she was a femme fatal in a red dress. But this time around, she's something quite different: a ghost. She is an absent lover in "The Piano," an unborn child in "When Under Ether," and the narrator's grandmother in "To Talk to You."

Harvey ditches the bluesy guitar in this album, which leaves a minimalistic tone centered merely around piano and her voice. The voice, which Harvey calls her "church voice" has never been used before on any of her previous albums. It's these new inflections that give the songs on her new album such meaning.

I'm sure some may say this is Harvey's best album yet, while others will call it a genre-experiment, something that doesn't show the "true" PJ Harvey. One thing I can say is, the album is without a doubt, unforgettable and unlike anything else she has ever done.

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