Have you ever noticed how much the media, corporations and big box retailers need to categorize things? It’s a tendency in the global capitalist consumer society to lay out goods in a regimented, easily reproduced way, from the floor plan of, say, a Borders Book & Music to the assemblage of a McDonald’s hamburger. The public is losing the ability to appreciate complex textures, to "read" original texts, be they written or simply presented by the world around them.

More and more passers by drift in my store and just gape, slack jawed, unable to comprehend the fact that it’s not laid out like the Borders/Barnes and Noble book consuming template they’re used to. One of the questions I still haven’t figured out how to answer without gritting my teeth is Are these books in any order? First of all, of course they are, it would obviously be impossible to function otherwise, and second, a cursory inspection of the shelves or even the signs would make things obvious, but because we don’t have the uniform signage and layout of the chains they are bound by, they are blind to the independent order around them.

With the complexity and uncertainty of the contemporary world people are drawn to security, even if, as with the Bush regime, it means the loss of freedom, or with MacDonald’s and the purveyors of popular entertainment, the loss of taste. When Bush opens his mouth you know exactly what he’s going to say as he pursues a rigid, simplistic, predictable consistency far past the point of absurdity, utterly oblivious to the actual situation around him. Similarly when you unwrap a McDonald’s hamburger or turn on the T.V. you know what you’ll get before you get it– more of the same, which people find comforting even though it may be crappy.

It’s the same thing with a Britney Spears or Kid Rock CD. The sound is so familiar that you feel as if you’ve already heard it even before you take off the shrink wrap, and it’s an utterly disposable product because, except for a few surface changes, it’s exactly like the CD before and after.

Which brings me to PJ Harvey’s new album White Chalk. If I’d listened to some of the reviews I’ve read I would never have bought it, but now I realize that the reviewers dismissed it because they couldn’t hear it. The "real" PJ Harvey is categorized in the ossified mind as the punky, guitar happy howler of classic work like Is This Desire? She’s celebrated for being an artist, but paradoxically criticized for daring to change, to follow her bliss, the reaction akin to that of horrified McDonald’s patrons if they bit into Big Macs made of Filet Mignon. The burger might actually be wonderful, but it just wouldn’t "taste right" because it wasn’t what they expected. White Chalk isn’t Is This Desire? (one of my favorite records), but it’s great in its own right.

A lot of contemporary music grows tedious by the first minute – O.K., I get it, you want more, Britney – but White Chalk has been my constant soundtrack for the last week, and, despite being only about thirty-four minutes long, hasn’t palled a bit. There’s a minor key, folksy feel to it, from the acoustic instruments to the restrained, whispery sound of PJ’s matchless voice, the lyrics suggesting old murder ballads and overheard confessions. It’s autumnal, just right for this time of year, spooky and haunting, a suite of sepia toned chamber music in the key of regret, nostalgia and dread. The same way a whisper makes you listen more actively than a shout, the quiet complexity of White Chalk remains intriguing — there’s something to it, something that moves and engages, veiled rather than hid, making the whole profound and real in a world that so often prefers sameness and plastic pretension.