It's funny, yesterday on P4K they posted about the tracklist and I thought, "Who really cares about an announced tracklist? I surely don't." Tracklist announcing is all part of the hype machine for which we're suckers.

Erik, I challenge you to write a preview of this record, based on nothing but the track names. Imaginary writer Michael X did it years ago for the White Stripes Elephant and it was pretty damn hilarious.

Of course, then he had to retract the entire thing once the record actually released.

Erik, I feel the exact same way. I always assumed somebody cared, but now I'm thinking maybe not, and we're all just thinking everyone else must care. I think it's a product of Internet music "journalism" being a mostly press release-driven affair. But who was the first to have the hubris to even consider sending out a press release of their forthcoming album's tracklist, though? I mean really.

I agree with Imaginary Dana... write us a review!

I want to write one of those reviews - I'm just not qualified to do it for a PJ Harvey album.

We could start a new trend in hype -- the pre-review! It is a bit of an imaginary record review, right?

Seriously dudes. This is gonna be HUGE.

Wow, well, I might just have to whip something up this evening ... but I can tell you right now, PJ's new album has clearly been influenced by all the death metal she's been listening to lately, I mean, "The Devil"? "When Under Ether?" "Dear Darkness"? Come on.

Better protect the kids!!!

This is why I love TIG. XO

White Chalk
01. "The Devil"
Digging deeply into her love for mutant traditional forms, Harvey opens the album with this terrifying adaptation of the vexated instrumental "Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground" by Blind Willie Johnson. Strangely, it also includes a touch of Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight," right down to big drum bash no hi-hat. Weird.

02. "Dear Darkness"
Harvey actually personifies an Emily Strange on 'X' on the album's second track -- I imagine the video will have lots of reds and blacks. The lyrics describe something about a girl's slingshot, and the sudden emasculation of a bog giant. I'm waiting anxiously for the Ellen Allien remix.

03. "Grow Grow Grow"
For her sweetest and most sadistic duet since her collaboration with Nick Cave on "Henry Lee," Harvey croons with the actor who played the Venus Fly Trap against Steve Martin in the film version of 'Little Shoppe of Horrors' -- the plant just isn't man enough for her yet.

04. "When Under Ether"
A very strong Fiery Furnaces influence here, with vocals reminiscent of a 'Boys from Pele' era Tori Amos. Wait, my CD player is on shuffle. I have no idea whose song this is.

05. "White Chalk"
A cover of 'White Lines' slowed down to that weird Houston one drop pseudo-crunk style, with nursery rhyme lyrics about the various ways that virgins come back after the 'little death.' Harvey and her sex ghosts. For once, the drum beats are more AC/DC than Zep but she will NOT allow the guitarist to wear shorts.

06. "Broken Harp"
In the early 60s, John Cale once threw down a piano from a tree, and on this wacky update, Harvey actually just busts the shit out of a harp for four minutes.

07. "Silence"
Another cover, similar to the previous track -- Varese, Cage, blah blah. It went to 4:34 so they really couldn't call it by the original title.

08. "To Talk To You"
Probably Harvey's most passionate, sultry, seductive, ambivalent song to date, with Dame Darcy's electric banjo rining as the lyrics go on about trying to make the moves on a mute Tom Waits now that his voice has dissolved into the sound of a frog frying in a pan.

09. "The Piano"
As Patti Smith did with "Gloria," Harvey deconstructs Billy Joel's "The Piano Man," but at the end of this song, the lounge player finds only relief in autoerotic asphyxiation while hanginging from a tree in the parking lot garden of a Holiday Inn. The frenzy at the end, as the man's legs swing to and fro, would blow Lenny Kaye's mind, but not help him play any better.

10. "Before Departure"
Trying to get a little techno-erotic Peaches action going along with Avril these days, this robot rock track about Tantric sex and delayed pleasure is a departure from anyone who grew up on "Rid of Me," but never knew our PJ she was a Kylie Minogue techno singer in the late 80s.

11. "The Mountain"
A really weird fourteen minute song in which Harvey fantasizes about being engulfed by a sumo wrestler. Outweird that shit, Nick "Stagger Lee" Cave!

OMG, and this is why we love Chris Estey so much!!!

Wow. I bow to Senor Estey on this one.

In this, and all things... :)

i think im going to be a little let down hearing the actual 'grow grow grow' after reading the imaginary review of it. rad.