Spendthrift With Love: Polly Scattergood's Debut Album

After a series of three singles in the last three years, Essex-based Polly Scattergood will finally release her self-titled debut on March 9. She's got all the right quirks in all the right places: she has a perfectly archaic, romantic surname; her album cover image portrays her as an enigmatic, updated Alice in Wonderland; and best of all, her lyrics and music live up to the rest with their candid poetry and dark emotional depths. This album is an expertly crafted document of emotionally-battered mental fabric unravelling thread by golden thread. I can see the comparisons with Kate Bush and Bjork, but she feels refreshingly new and tragically romantic in a different way. This vulnerable record takes on Ophelia-like madness with fists full of flowers and clods of dirt as Scattergood strips her soul to its fractured core.

The album begins with I Hate the Way, a track which released last year as a single. The music hums and clicks lightly beneath Scattergood's captivating, breathy vocals; ominous electronic noises shiver and pulse through the track while she relates the haunting details of an emotionally abusive relationship. About two minutes into the song, electric guitars tear through and elevate the mournful, broken tone into a passionate, mad lucidity, culminating in "doo doo doo's" that are the narrator's answer to "My doctor said I've got to sing a happy tune," the haunting last line before the reverb-laden rap during the last minute of the song. Switching into third person briefly, Other Too Endless is a melodic ode to denial that periodically rumbles with the narrator's quavering emotions, miniature maelstroms threatening to capsize her. The following chorus is repeated several times throughout the track in an infinite spiral: "It can't be real/No, it can't be real/If I close my eyes, then maybe I won't feel/Another too endless/So do you think I should end this?" Backed by teardrops of piano, Untitled 27 opens with ephemeral snatches of "I miss you," "I'm lost," and "Where are you?," like the missives of childish spirits lost in their own static and unresponsive looking-glasses. Scattergood's vocals are ragged through lines like "suicidal tendencies drink creativity," and they reach dizzying heights of heartbreaking desperation as she cries "It hurts to be here."

The tone shifts with Please Don't Touch as broad strokes of acoustic guitar punctuate her staccato, child-like delivery. Hovering between whispers and coos, Scattergood delivers a whimsical, unpredictable performance, enhancing self-reflective lines like "feeling strange and looking rotten"; at the same time, she reveals her contemporary youth with references to "skinny jeans and Pick 'n Mix." The tempo comes back down for the piano-based I Am Strong, a track that delicately dances through a steady stream of reiterated self-declarations in ever-increasing whirls of misty vocals as she tries to shake the witch from her back and reconcile the conflicts in her self-perception.

Beginning with light airiness, Unforgiving Arms tells the story of a "typical writer" and the "typical sinner" who falls in love/hate with him. Unflinchingly self-flagellating, the narrator blames herself and her own personality flaws for the relationship problems. Despite the sweetly melodic phrasing and bouncy snares, the undercurrent is undeniably morbid as the narrator declares the futility of offering messy feelings to an emotional fortress: "He won't let me in/In case I crease his pages." The fragility and insecurity of the narrator surface again in Poem Song, where Scattergood peels back the scabs of mental wounds against a background of hesitant piano and vocals that rasp and sob with a controlled rage and frustration. More than three minutes into the song, a reprieve of violins comes in before Scattergood re-enters with an almost disturbing plea for reunion.

Austere synths and a drum machine take over for Bunny Club, a jet-black recounting of sleaze, which displays a brilliant schizophrenia as Scattergood's vocals slip easily between dirty breaths and innocent sunshine; she explodes the angel/whore dichotomy in a flurry of discordant, symphonic synthpop. Nitrogen Pink, another previously released single, is buzzing and whizzing with pent-up, squealing feelings that threaten to shatter all composure; it's like the narrator is spinning round and round with open arms, triumphantly welcoming the pain like bouquets dripping with blood-red flowers. Apparently, Scattergood wrote the song about a friend deteriorating with cancer. The record concludes with Breathe In Breathe Out, a serene piano ballad accented with bird twitters. It is a weary resignation after all the preceding catharsis as Scattergood's voice delicately falters with the lyric "Learn to breathe in/Learn to breathe out/I can't let you go...yet."

There is something truly magical about Scattergood's debut; it breaks your heart with the delicacy of a heart surgeon. She accomplishes a record akin to a diary of an eighteenth-century woman accused of hysterics and committed to Bedlam. And when you're finished listening, you emerge feeling purified by insanity. For Scattergood, the people she loves are the ones who are here today, gone tomorrow, leaving her naked and impoverished; her only crime is being a spendthrift with her love.

I Hate the Way - Polly Scattergood

I Am Strong - Polly Scattergood

Nitrogen Pink - Polly Scattergood

Nelly Furtado's a Cannibal, But The Queen Prefers Corgis: Welcome to the Music of Tom Rosenthal

Just recently, London-based singer/songwriter frYars sent out a MySpace bulletin urging people to watch a YouTube video by a friend. That friend turned out to be Tom Rosenthal and the video was of a song he wrote called Mark Ronson. After watching and listening to his rather thorough lambasting of Ronson, I had to find out more about him. Much like his friend, frYars, who produces for Rosenthal, he is offbeat, often humourous, and primarily uses piano for his musical narratives. With the wit and whimsy of musical comics like The Mighty Boosh and Flight of the Conchords and the quintessential Britishness and surreality of artists like Eugene MacGuinness and Simon Bookish, Rosenthal is the Oscar Wilde to The Mighty Boosh's Edward Lear.

The gentle, classical piano provides a fantastic background for the tremulous, earnest voice that recounts literate stories that deal with topics ranging through bizarre dreams, Jeremy Kyle, royalty, religion, nudist colonies, fictional sidekicks and Tesco. The tweeness of the musical compositions lends an air of rambling, childish abandon, like a small, precocious child telling stories as they come to him/her, words tumbling out in a torrent of breathless creativity; however, this style belies a deep-seated sophistication and satirical talent.

The aforementioned song Mark Ronson is everything I was thinking about Ronson set to an understated, rolling piano ballad - watch the video above to see and hear what I mean. Rosenthal takes aim at Nelly Furtado in Nelly is a Maneater, a composition that fuses the original Maneater chorus with a carefully constructed backstory that involves Nelly being raised by wolves and consuming animals and CDs until she progresses to full-fledged cannibalism. Rosenthal tackles another songstress for Song for Regina, which is a passionate ode to Spektor in which the narrator professes his love for her and proclaims that he has listened to Samson countless times, but didn't understand what Wonder bread is. In Touch My Bum, Rosenthal intelligently mocks Jamie T and other musicians that say nothing through their music; he expresses this vacuity by saying these artists may as well be singing, "This is life/touch my bum."

In addition to commenting on popular culture figures, Rosenthal has songs about other facets of society. I almost choked on my tongue when Rosenthal completes the first line of his song The Queen: "The Queen sat down for her lunch/she had corgi on toast/because she likes that the most." The song goes on to describe a royal existence that includes playing charades with Prince Philip and watching MTV (at which point, the Queen asks where Enrique Iglesias's mole has gone and Prince Philip replies that it's on an island with Sonny Bono, Elvis Presley and Fred Astaire). I had a similar choke-snorting reaction to a line in the song World's Greatest Lover when after musing why women don't like him, the narrator asks, "Is it because I still play hide and seek...with my mother?"

Another favourite song of mine is Giant Bicycle, which layers spoken word over softly rumbling piano as Rosenthal recounts a six minute digressive description of one of the most surreal dreams I've ever heard (all I can envision is Rosenthal riding a pennyfarthing in the Tour de France); the only song that I can think of that's comparable is Noel Fielding's collaboration with Midfield General. Equally as enchanting is the tripping romp of Away With the Fairies, which takes twee, hippie love to its extreme conclusion: being in love with everyone in the world except Robert Mugabe. It's William Blake with a short circuit. One of the best put-downs to snot-nosed kids comes in the form of Phones Away, Boys; the narrator compares the delinquent youth to Channel 5, KFC, a weed and a triangle in an orchestra. And 1868 is one of the best songs I've ever heard about homophobia (the song culminates in the line, "if Stephen Fry is going to hell, then I want to go with him").

Because Rosenthal believes most of his music should be available for free, he has put a large chunk of his music up on his Web site for download - I recommend the entire lot. By the looks of it, it seems that Tom Rosenthal is bursting with ideas, so I eagerly await new songs and an album. Rosenthal is one of those rare, but perfect combinations of musical acuity, intellectual agility, and imaginative comedy. Like all good satirists, he will outlast the fads he so eloquently observes and trounces.

Giant Bicycle - Tom Rosenthal

Mark Ronson - Tom Rosenthal

The Queen - Tom Rosenthal

Brave New Artists: Andrea Liuzza and Volenté

This post is going to be about singer-songwriters because there's something rather brave about them, especially those who write, play and produce themselves. There's nowhere to hide when you're a singer-songwriter. I've recently found two of them that I'm impressed with. Andrea Liuzza, who hails from Italy, and Volenté, who comes from Wales, both create vulnerable songs, but in different styles; the former is a mix of lo-fi indie and raspy theatrics, while the latter is gentle, melodic acoustic music with electronic elements. Liuzza has just released the follow-up to his first album Countless Ways For Pressing Flowers, which is called Melancholia I, and Volenté is about to release the follow up to her first album Cold Clean, which is entitled Butterflies Fall Away.

I only became aware of Andrea Liuzza recently via a post by The Devil Has the Best Tuna, and the fact he was compared with Patrick Wolf and Radiohead caught my attention. I took a listen to his latest album Melancholia I, which can be streamed and purchased at CD Baby, and I fell in love with the broken voice and broken music. I agree that there are links to Patrick Wolf, Radiohead, and even Bright Eyes, but Liuzza definitely crafts his own distinct anatomy of melancholy. The album is bookended by tracks called Born and Unborn. The former is a low-key piano ballad that only lasts a minute, but it nonetheless touches you and lingers in your imagination with its child-like vocals singing words of despair; the latter acts as an instrumental reprise of Born. The title track lurches about as it tells the story of a boy who "never makes love, just makes war," and a girl who "cuts her skin with a knife, looking at blood to find life." The crashing chorus and desperation in Liuzza's voice eventually ends in heart-drenching rain. The track Birdie shuffles along to screechy bouts of feedback as it recounts the memories of childhood naivete and holds them up against the reality represented by a bleeding bird. I Kissed Alice is a slower, acoustic ballad that demonstrates the fragility that underlies the album - the heartbreak and longing is a frosted window into Liuzza's soul, translucent and breakable. Then the track Sick swoops in with theatrical flourishes and spins around in a bitter waltz of a diseased mind - the narrator denounces everything about human interaction and reveals the dark inner workings of depression and self-loathing at the song's beginning, but is plaintively asking "Do you love me, too? Can you care for me?" by the end, clamouring for the affection he cannot believe himself capable of returning.

Pink Rabbits Are Always Happy is another completely vulnerable track with Liuzza's honesty raking over you like razor blades. The reckless, breathless Wolf reminds me of a rockier Clinic and splatters nihilism against the wall like the blood from a burst heart only to revel in smearing it all over itself. In anticipation of this track, Liuzza wrote this telling piece on his Web site: "Wolf is a Pleistocene survivor. He risks extinction. He spends his wild life with only 1 partner. Wolf is the dark side of Little Red Riding Hood. Wolf is the undesired reverb of music. There's a Wolf in you. Cry, cry Wolf." Penultimate track I Miss You Forever is a dreamy tune and the most peaceful one on the album, a brief surfacing from the shadowy depths of the previous tracks, or perhaps a surrender before voluntarily going under.



In contrast with Liuzza's acrid torment and brooding, Volenté (whose full name is Volenté Lloyd) creates sweeter, wistful music, but is no less personal. Her voice is alternately reminiscent of Kelli Dayton/Ali, who used to sing for Sneaker Pimps, and Kate Bush. I've only been able to listen to five of the twelve tracks for her latest album, which can be heard on her MySpace page, but they've given me an excellent feel for the record, and I would love to hear more when the album releases in late July. Title track, Butterflies Fall Away, layers acoustic guitar over washes of woodwind sound as she implores her loved one to keep strong. Middle Ground pulses with an arcane magic, organic rhythms paired with shimmery synth lines and her voice sounds both delicate and tribal. Heart of Gold pushes Volenté's vocals to dizzying, enchanting heights as an Eastern melody line runs in the background - the refrain of "always all about you" continues to build and emulates Kate Bush at her most dramatic. Volenté shifts back into a more soulful timbre for Old Love and advises that it "ain't no good going back to an old love" to the ticking of drums and bold guitars. Missing You is a beautiful atmospheric track with ethereal vocals but without actual lyrics, expressing the sentiment of the title without having to articulate it with language; in many ways, a sentiment like this is best left unarticulated when music can say everything that words can't. Just as the best graphic designers are the ones who know how to use white space, I think it's a sign of a true musical artist when he/she knows when to let the music speak for itself, and Volenté does that with this song.

Andrea Liuzza's MySpace: www.myspace.com/andrealiuzza

Andrea Liuzza's Web site: http://andrealiuzza.blogspot.com/

Volenté's MySpace: www.myspace.com/volentelloyd


Sick - Andrea Liuzza

Wolf - Andrea Liuzza

Middle Ground - Volenté

Heart of Gold- Volenté

Tangled in True Love's Defeat: Andrew Spice's Pretty Demons

This post is going to take us back a bit in time, considering Andrew Spice's debut album Pretty Demons released five years ago, but before I go there, I want to go back a bit further than that. To a high school gym in 1999...where I first witnessed Andrew Spice truly perform.

In the midst of a shoddy variety show put on by our Winnipeg high school, wedged between amateur skits and adequate saxophone solos, Andrew sat down at a piano and performed Tori Amos' version of Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Though I had known Andrew for about five years by that point, I hadn't known him as a musician - I had known him as the quiet clarinet player beside me in the school band, but hardly as a musician in his own right. I was completely riveted by his haunting voice and passionate piano playing as he lost himself in the music and emotions, capturing the tender torture of the song. At that moment, I knew he didn't belong with the rest of us - his level of maturity, musical and otherwise, greatly exceeded anything the rest of us adolescents were thinking or doing at the time. While the parents and students assembled there in the audience may very well have preferred the friendlier, amateur fare of other performances, playing out the typical popularity contests of high school, they were hardly the correct, discerning audience to be hearing him.

Thankfully, Canadian singer-songwriter Emm Gryner ended up hearing him, and then producing his album, Pretty Demons, on her Dead Daisys Records label and subsequently playing on Pretty Demons. Manitoba Film and Sound also endorsed the record with a marketing grant to assist in its promotion and distribution. The same year, Pretty Demons was nominated for an OutMusic Award for Best Debut Album. And unfortunately, while all this was going on, I completely missed it. I was hardly as up on my music at that point as I am now, and I was very likely too absorbed in the British music scene (as usual). It took me up until 2006 to notice, but then I couldn't turn away.

Pretty Demons is indeed pretty in its fractured and bruised self-revelation, managing to avoid standard heartbreak cliches. I have difficulty comparing Andrew with other artists because I still think of his voice as completely his own and I can't quite objectively step back and hold it up to other artists. The best I can do to describe Andrew's style is: His voice hovers like mist over cascades of piano, creating rainbows in unexpected places of darkness. His influences listed on his MySpace profile include PJ Harvey, Tori Amos, Nine Inch Nails and Imogen Heap, which I can definitely feel in the atmosphere of his music, but again, Andrew escapes a direct comparison to any of them. On tracks like Unafraid, Beautiful Creatures, and Nice to Know, Andrew peels back the bandages on a broken heart to expose a poignant self-doubt and vulnerability in lyrics like: "how easy this would be/if I wasn't me/how unafraid/how perfectly made/I wish I was" (Unafraid), "if I were easy and pretty pretty/I'd be remembered" (Beautiful Creatures), and "the poison that I am/must be hard to cure yourself/from everything that's never quite enough" (Nice to Know). Melodically, Beautiful Creatures is the closest to a radio-friendly hit with its pulsing beat that mimicks a tense heartbeat, and soaring chorus. It is followed by one of my favourite tracks on the album, Silent Rain, which features trembling, breathy vocals, fluid piano, strains of strings, and the incredible lyric of "I'm cold and grey inside this lie/tangled in true love's defeat."

Breaking away from the fluidity of Silent Rain, Perfect Day begins with a romping piano line that continues to roll beneath lines like "no it's not something you said/it's something that you are/all uncertainty and loveliness/paint me pictures with your eyes/take me in your arms tonight." The next song titled Christopher reveals the object of betrayal and hurt (and likely the object of the majority of the album's sentiments), and Christopher then turns up by name in the lyrics of the following track Nice to Know. Pride, like Silent Rain, is a more understated, hushed song, tremulous in its honesty and beauty where vocal and piano move as one. For the track Sometimes Lukewarm, Andrew's voice dances over the lilting, upbeat melody as the lyrics tell a story of relationship confusion, where feelings about a partner can shift between being suffused with love to overcome with the disappointing reality of his/her flaws. Congratulations takes envy of an ex to new heights as acoustic guitar takes over - "motherfucker" has never been sung so delicately. The album ends with Matthew, a song dedicated to Matthew Shepard, the American student who was fatally attacked in 1998 in a horrific episode of hate crime. It features some of the most heartbreaking lyrics about death I've ever heard, creating a personal conversation with Shepard's spirit and elevating him from beyond a hero to a canonization for those who can see themselves in him. Overall, Pretty Demons is a beautiful document of young heartbreak and loss, and a search for comprehension and healing.

Andrew hasn't officially released any music since Pretty Demons, but I continue to hope that he will - he's the classic case of an indie artist that will never get the respect and support he/she deserves from the current music industry. If I've convinced you by now (and I hope I have), you can easily purchase Pretty Demons at CD Baby. I'm thankful that I was there back in 1999 to witness the beginning of such musical talent. And here's to hoping that once again, the right people will be listening.

Andrew Spice's MySpace: www.myspace.com/andrewspice

Beautiful Creatures - Andrew Spice

Silent Rain - Andrew Spice