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Post by tannis on Jan 23, 2009 19:27:26 GMT
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Post by tannis on Mar 6, 2009 14:27:26 GMT
Polly Scattergood - Other Too Endless
www.youtube.com/watch?v=lh0wgws9kTI
Film made by Tom Henry Jones and Polly Scattergood for the single "Other Too Endless" released in The UK on Feb 23rd 2009 Mysterious girl
POLLY SCATTERGOOD . . . . 8
POLLY SCATTERGOOD
(MUTE)
A fantastically dark and unsettling debut, direct from just outside of Colchester.
On the surface, it would seem Polly Scattergood's intentions with her debut album would be to induce discomfort, to unnerve and to unsettle the listener. This doesn't seem entirely honourable behaviour for a 22-year old from the outskirts of Colchester, who has emerged into the spotlight. Dig deeper, however, and you'll be rewarded with a darkly humorous, kaleidoscopic suite of songs that defy patronisation - not so much a little woman lost in a hall of mirrors, as a bravely unique talent who trills in a breathless voice about desolate things.
Deceptively light on the ear at first, Polly's curious mixture of the everyday and the fantastic carries a serrated knife-edge. The musical backdrops - odd piano loops, discreet guitars, flutters of synth and adeptly deployed electronic percussion - frame songs in which you can't get away from what Polly emotes. You're stuck in Pollyworld and she's centre stage with first-person narratives that blur the lines between fantasy and reality. She inhabits the songs, though they're not necessarily about her. And the imagery of pills for breakfast, slit wrists, "whore" insults and treaties on the vagaries of love would be disturbing if they weren't leavened by a dark brand of humour.
'I Hate The Way' sets the album's tone, with naked emotions that come from a dark place giving way to an unnervingly direct spoken-word section. But the distance between the authoress and the characters becomes obvious by the time 'Bunny Club' comes round. Here, an ingénue from outside London ends up working in a lap-dancing club, under fluorescent strip-lighting and shares her thoughts about a distant paramour with us while going through the motions. It's not Polly Scattergood. Certainly not the same Polly as in the penultimate, catchy and propulsive 'Nitrogen Pink' - just one song before the stark, piano-ballad closer, 'Breathe In Breathe Out'.
'I Am Strong', Scattergood says elsewhere, while sometimes describing moments of weakness. It's an affirmation and a given, as anyone who has been put through what she puts her characters through would definitely gain strength from the experiences, the pretend-coy 'Please Don't Touch' included. So, there's no need to be apprehensive about Polly Scattergood. She has set a high-water mark for herself with this debut that she can and surely will surpass. The mind boggles - in a great way - as to exactly what she'll be up to 10 years from now.
NME review of Polly's album, Dele Fadele[/i][/color] Polly Scattergood - Bunny Club(Audio Only)www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyI1IH4LTswPOLLY SCATTERGOOD - Polly Scattergood
****
ISN’T Polly Scattergood a fantastic name? A children’s author would have done well to think of it. There is, however, a cautionary tale from the real 21-year-old who was born with it.
“Scattergood has two meanings and I hope I don’t live up to either!” she ventures. “One is ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ and the other is ‘spendthrift waster’.”
Polly is not your average blonde Essex girl. Her self-titled album is one of the year’s most compelling debuts, brimful of vivid confessional lyrics and wild flights of musical fancy.
She’s been called “the Kate Bush of the 21st Century”, but she’s way too individual to be called a copycat. She sounds like a little girl lost, her cute voice carried along by playful pop tunes, but closer listens reveal some deeper, darker, sometimes disturbing undercurrents. And, as Polly gets more and more attention through singles I Hate The Way and Other Too Endless, other Scattergoods have been taking notice.
“I keep getting random emails from people called Scattergood saying, ‘Do you know so and so?’ I think there’s a few in America. My dad’s from the North East of England and there’s some more there, too.”
Cool
The eldest of three children, Polly grew up near Colchester, Essex, on the coastal side, in a land of big skies and “greens and greys and blues.”
She says: “Dad was a boat builder and wanted to live right by the sea so we bought this derelict old house. It didn’t have electricity and was completely wonky but really cool. We all mucked in to help rebuild it and my mum tiled the whole roof.”
Music and Polly were never far apart from an early age. “I’ve always done it. There’s always been music in the house, always an out-of-tune piano. I wrote my first proper song when I was 12.
“I still don’t really know how to play anything properly. I just kind of make it up as I go along. I can’t read music so I play piano and guitar how I hear them.”
At school, Polly cut a distinct figure. “I used to paint my shoes pink in art lessons and stuff,” she recalls. “I guess they saw me as a bit odd but I didn’t take much notice. I left as soon as I could”
By the time she got her big break — a place at The Brit School where former pupils include Amy Winehouse, Adele, Kate Nash and Luke Pritchard from The Kooks — Polly had written a staggering 800 songs.
“As a teenager I used to sit in my room, writing the whole time. Then The Brit School gave me the opportunity to study music. It’s the only place in the UK where you can go and do that for free as far as I know. A lot of people call it a fame factory and there’s been a lot of negativity. But if I hadn’t gone there, I wouldn’t have had the chance to sit at a piano for 12 hours a day and write. Because I couldn’t read music, it was my only option.
“If I hadn’t gone there, I would have had to do some completely random course or get a job. I had my focus because I knew that all I wanted was music.”
Polly’s album kicks off with the emotional rollercoaster I Hate The Way. Written when she was 17, it tells of the highs and lows and boyfriend troubles that go with that age. “It just came out,” she says. “All my songs come quite quickly without thinking.
“It would be very difficult for me to write a song where I didn’t feel some kind of emotion but they’re not all autobiographical, thank God!”
With talk of suicide and depression, I wonder if Polly has endured some difficult times.
“I think creative people have bigger highs and lows. I’m a very emotional person but I didn’t want to write a real depressed album. I’ve got lots of different levels of personality. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, it goes very dark and bleak but other times its very colourful.”
Another key song is Other Too Endless, her most recent single. “I explained it on my MySpace page as: ‘Other Too Endless came to my table, spilt my wine, ate my food and then left with no apologies.’
Death
“The song represents betrayal, deep feeling and learning to get up and breathe the next day.”
The album’s most intense, upbeat “rock” track is Nitrogen Pink, which expresses the singer’s realisation that nothing is forever.
“It’s not a sad song about death or anything. It makes me smile and think of the people I love. I find it a happy song.” It’s clear that behind the cloud of blonde hair and big, round blue eyes lies a complex soul. When Polly plays live, she appears a natural performer but, even then, all is not as seems. “Once I’m on stage, everything is fine,” she says. “But I’ve got terrible stage fright to the point where it makes me sick.
“We did this gig at The Roundhouse in London recently — my first big headline show. It was sold out and, the week before, I got so nervous. Why on earth would people bother to come? I write these little songs for myself. I thought I couldn’t do it and actually went to get hypnotised. It helped quite a lot. The hypnotist said to me, ‘Polly, it’s all right, people in life, in music, make mistakes’.”
With her dazzling debut album out next week and live audiences growing apace, it’s certain Polly Scattergood’s confidence will grow.
Don’t bet against her being here today, not gone tomorrow.
The Sun, Friday, March 6, 2009www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/sftw/article2298224.eceUntitled 27 - Polly Scattergoodwww.youtube.com/watch?v=hN4p3HE63M8
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Post by tannis on Mar 11, 2009 13:27:45 GMT
  Polly's debut album is really good! The cover picture reminds me of Catherine Deneuve in Polanski's Repulsion (1965); and the album is full of cracking tracks and reflections in a London bedsit!I Hate The Way gets an album makeover with its breaking coda and the most sinister chat-up line ever: "Not all men are bad and I am not like your dad"! Other Too Endless ("love-blind"), Please Don't Touch ("that rat man"), Bunny Club ("roll in, roll out, roll up") and Unforgiving Arms are light and dark pop songs, "full of cheats and creeps who lick the crumbs up and steal the magic" ... Untitled 27, Poem Song and I Am Strong (with Julee Cruise-esque falling vocals) reveal pain, fragility, and a gothic creative seam. Bunny Club is seedy, funny and frenzied and Nitrogen Pink is "a rocket-powered fantasy alliance between Kate Bush and Neu!" (The Guardian). The album closes quietly and reflectively with "Breathe In Breath Out". Missing from the debut album is Darkness Blows My Mind, which I hope will feature on Polly's next album, as I will be buying that one too!  Polly Scattergood is a rare talent, a musician who can make the disturbing sound delightful. Built around fractious yet delicate guitar and piano (she plays a stylophone and accordion too), and Scattergood's distinctive voice, the album is produced by Simon Fisher-Turner and Gareth Jones.
“I don’t see myself as a singer-songwriter, or even a singer,” says 22 year-old Scattergood. “I would describe myself as a songwriter who sings.”
But Polly Scattergood is not a whiny troubadour. There is humor on her album, albeit of the dark variety. Scattergood sings of suicidal tendencies, sadness in the air, spitting on her French knickers and being called a whore. But she does so in such an idiosyncratically alluring, soft little-girl voice, one of ravaged innocence, placing her startling imagery in such pretty pop contexts, that you can’t help being seduced.www.antimusic.com/news/09/feb/11Polly_Scattergoods_Hate_Filled_Debut_Coming.shtml |
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Post by tannis on Mar 14, 2009 22:27:37 GMT
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