WHERE I AM COMING FROM
Polly Paulusma will be releasing her new single Where Im Coming From on 22nd October. You can also watch her playing this track live by clicking here
This track has also just been chosen by Mark Radcliffe and Maconie for therePick N Mix tracks this week, you can vote for Polly to win by clicking here
FIGHTS & NUMBERS
The new Acoustic Album will be exclusively available from iTunes from the 3rd of September.
ACOUSTIC TOUR
20.10.07 - Masetti, Bolzano
21.10.07 - Bar Wolf, Bologna
22.10.07 - La Locomotiva, Osnaho
23.10.07 - Casa 139, Milano
24.10.07 - Banale, Padova
26.10.07 - Circolo Artisti, Roma
27.10.07 - Mutiny, Napoli
GUITAR SHOP VIDEOS
Polly Paulusma records every track from her album 'Fingers & Thumbs' in 10 different music shops.
Click here to see the first two videos
Fingers And Thumbs
“When I was eight years old, my enraged headmistress grabbed me by the hair and shouted, ‘Do you know the meaning of the word defiance?’” Polly Paulusma giggles naughtily at the memory: “Well, I just heard her voice again.” It’s been twenty-three years since the singer-songwriter’s school-yard telling off, long enough so that she can’t remember what prompted it. But neither the scolding nor the sore scalp did anything to arrest her habit for stepping up to a challenge. Paulusma’s second album, the captivating Fingers & Thumbs, is testament to that. Her fiery defiance smoulders throughout the record, powering its strident pop melodies and underscoring its honest tales. Achingly tender yet simmering with a persistent urgency, the album bears the scars of the personal trauma from which it was conceived.
The seed of Fingers & Thumbs was sown as Paulusma released her striking debut, 2004’s Scissors In My Pocket. The album’s enchanting simplicity framed her warm husk of a voice and marked her out as an heir to Joni Mitchell’s graceful legacy. Critical acclaim and plays on Parky welcomed the album’s arrival. And adding to the excitement, Paulusma discovered she was going to have a baby. “I had my album launch party and then found out I was pregnant. It was all quite a whirlwind,” she says, a nostalgic smile dancing momentarily on her lips. “And then I lost it.”
“I had my first miscarriage about two weeks after my first album came out,” says Paulusma. “I’d always wanted a family, so I was very sad when I lost the baby. We left it a few months – I was touring that summer – and we started trying again in the autumn.” Paulusma and her husband’s endeavours were rewarded, only for her to miscarry again. Understandably the couple were distraught. “All through the touring of the album we were trying, and I had a lot of the older generation in my family telling me I kept losing babies because of what I do, which was really hard to take,” says Paulusma. “I really love what I do – writing and performing music. I thought why do I have to choose between something I really love and having a family? It made for quite a tense relationship with my music. I felt I was committing murder every time I picked up my guitar. It seemed so unfair. I’d only just begun with my music and now I felt I should be giving it up.”
Throughout her 20s, Paulusma flirted with a number of occupations, from scholar (she embarked on a PhD after graduation from Cambridge University) to novelist (she was talented enough to bag a literary agent). But raised on a diet of Joni Mitchell and Carole King, music was always Paulusma’s first love. She wrote her first song aged ten, but it took 18 years of denial before she finally listened to her heart and recorded her debut album.
“Music had always been part of my life,” she says. “I’d been in bands, writing songs all along, but I’d just been doing it for the hell of it. It never crossed my mind to try and do it properly.” It wasn’t until she recorded backing vocals for friends Ben & Jason’s last album that the penny finally dropped. “I had one of these earth shattering moments when I suddenly realised that everything I was doing was wrong and that I should be doing this instead,” she says. “It was like I got hit with an electric current – maybe I did – it was a pretty lo-fi studio so there was always that possibility! I just started crying. I thought, oh buggery fuck, here we go again.”
But after her miscarriages, Paulusma’s relationship with her music threatened to turn sour. “I felt really guilty for doing this thing I got so much pleasure from, because maybe it was hurting someone else – which is quite a fucked up thing to think,” says Paulusma. “Up until that point I felt I’d been lucky in my life. Everything I’d turned my mind to I’d been able to do, one way or another. But then suddenly I felt everything was turning to dust. It was a really dark time. I felt like I had blood on my hands and it did affect the material I was writing.”
Unable to stop herself, Paulusma fed her guilt. Allowing her heart to rule her head she dived deep inside to dredge up “all the horrible shit” to pour into her songs. “I deliberately went trawling through emotions,” says Paulusma, “rather that just relying on life to come along and wash them up on your shore. It was quite painful.” She laughs now, almost surprised at herself. “It was a bit like therapy actually! Sometimes you don’t quite realise that there’s something festering deep down. You do have to go digging for it and it’s unbelievable what pops out. But the last three years have been fucked up and it felt weird trying to make a baby when the world was so screwed up.”
Fingers & Thumbs is an intensely bruised, raw and honest album. Paulusma is fiercely attuned to the fragility of life and notions of responsibility, survival and guilt cling to her voluptuous melodies. But the dark themes inhabiting the album are speckled with a shimmering brightness. Resilience pierces the disappointment of “Day One”, sweet tenderness soothes the sorrow of “This One I Made For You” and hope warms the melancholy title track.
Of course Paulusma’s innate defiance, her stubborn reluctance to give in, is responsible for the drive that colours her songs. But there’s something else too. Something changed. After three years the clouds parted and the frustrations that bore these songs of experience suddenly dissipated. “For some reason after February 14th last year, everything came right,” says Paulusma. At the last minute she found a bass player to help record her album and began working with Ken Nelson (Coldplay, Gomez, Badly Drawn Boy) – the producer she’d long courted. And despite being on an IVF waiting list, the singer fell pregnant naturally and her little girl, Valentine, born on the same day as Paulusma, November 10, bears the name of the day she was conceived.
“I don’t understand what happened,” says Paulusma still not quite believing her good turn of fate. “I got pregnant, we started working with Ken, and when we got up to the studio to record this album – it was like falling off a log. It all slotted into place even though everything around it was a nightmare: the studio nearly got sold between the two sessions, there was a death in the family halfway through so we had to pause proceedings for a while… but whenever we were doing the creative bits, it was just a joy, we were bouncing off the walls it sounded so lovely.”
Fingers & Thumbs was recorded pretty much live and was done and dusted in five weeks: “Ken was thrilled because it was the fastest album he says he’s ever made,” says Paulusma, clearly thrilled herself. But of course the singer had her own very pressing, non-negotiable deadline to contend with; the birth of her baby. “Trying to play the guitar with a big bump is not funny after 35 weeks,” laughs Paulusma.
Fingers & Thumbs was an album created in two parts. Its conception, like that of baby Valentine, was fraught with soul-searching. But once conceived, giving life to its seedling songs was a wonderful experience. “There was the one moment when the record got stitched together and it was amazing,” says Paulusma. “It all just seemed to spring into life.” Interrupted by a gurgle, she looks down at her baby daughter. “And yes, this as well. I’ve seen so many parallels. Everything crosses into everything else.”
The last few years have given Paulusma much to reflect on. “I’ve had to learn – counter-intuitively – to sit back and let things happen; not one of my strong suits! But I’ve changed a lot making this album. And I can see it in my face, when I look at photographs. It’s funny, I remember hearing an older woman once saying, ‘I’ve earned every one of these wrinkles.’” She smiles down at the cooing child on her knee. “Now I’ve got little smile lines appearing,” she beams, “and I feel like I’ve earned every one of those as well.”
