PJ Harvey, "White Chalk"

Billboard

On which PJ Harvey unstraps her guitar, sits down at a piano and completely reinvents her sound, creating a quiet masterpiece in the process. Seven proper albums into her career, she confronts less directly many of the themes that have defined her work—sex, love, betrayal—and instead focuses on what's left after all the damage has been done: an "empty" and "insignificant" life. This is no warm nostalgia trip down memory lane, but rather an offering to those the narrator has lost, either literally or figuratively, so she may ask "forgiveness." Essentially one long suicide note, the concept likely would have failed in less accomplished hands. But Harvey's mostly bare arrangements, stark vocal delivery and razor-sharp lyrics add up to a poignant, haunting rumination on what makes—and breaks—a life.