Concerning White Chalk, by PJ Harvey

The more I listen to it, the more I'm convinced that White Chalk is really a great album. I've always kind of liked Sarah McLachlan but felt like a queer about it. PJ Harvey on this record is the perfect solution: she's like Sarah McLachlan standing atop a wind-and-sea-buffeted cliff, staring into the frigid waves below and contemplating the miles upon miles separating her jilting, heedless lover from her.

Harvey's voice is incredibly expressive, ranging from an awesomely full-voiced alto to a husky, oscillating falsetto, and it always follows deceptive and deranged, yet beautiful, melodies. The piano-driven, reverbed-out songs, meanwhile, relate to each other like a series of monochromatic oil paintings: varied subjects and compositions, but all tied together by a minimized and unified pallette and a common mood.

This stylistic unity and the severe (though moving) bummer of a theme make a virtue of the album's brevity. As awesome as the music is, it's also tiringly painful, and if prolonged it might become tiresome. At under 34 minutes, the album has just enough time to breach your defenses but not enough to kill you.