One thing is abundantly clear when you look at PJ Harvey's 15 year career: not a single moment of it has been predictable. Just when it looked as if she was on her way to becoming an Alternative-Rock superstar after 2000's monumental Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, Harvey goes and makes Uh Huh Her, a record that made sure only die hard fans would stick with her and truth be told Harvey probably wouldn't want it any other way.

After a three-year lay off Harvey has returned with White Chalk, a quietly brooding album that once again finds long time collaborators Flood and John Parish behind the production boards and once again finds Harvey in the most introverted of moods. Every song on White Chalk revolves around the piano in one way or another (sorry Stories fans, no electric guitar to be found at all here) and sometimes the haunting beauty of it all can be quite intriguing. "Grow Grow Grow" is Harvey at her vocal best with the complex tinkling of keys sounding like waterfalls in the background and first single "While Under Either" is a petite sounding treasure to behold. The bad news though is that White Chalk becomes too homogenous for its own good. By the tail end, every track has that one and the same sound and by the time you get to album closer "The Mountain" it almost becomes a challenge to see if you can keep your finger from hitting the eject button before the CD can finish. White Chalk certainly has moments of fleeting brilliance, but unfortunately for Harvey this white chalk might as well be marking a the spot where a live body once lay - right before it died.