And now, for her next trick, Emma Pollock will give you all of the familiarity and surprise you could ever want for, in cahoots with each other, just as the red and white tandems flirtatiously and perversely in the peppermint. She raises the kinds of toasts to situations that aren’t really spellbinding or noteworthy on any sort of scale measuring ogling or doe-eyed looks of jealousy. These aren’t the speeches from the best man or the maid of honors. Pollock, the former member of Scottish band The Delgados, honors the creaky porch swing that just holds dear memories and those who might be moralistic, but only in an almost imperceptible way. You know those hours of desperation that are always written into sitcoms and chick flicks where the grieving and moping displaced lady slides into bed or onto a couch with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia or something equally fattening and just goes forth vegging out? Pollock doesn’t praise these moments because that would make her kind of depressing, but like her sorta labelmate Jennifer O’Conner, she gets her kicks with the generic (not in interest, mind you) calamities and sour notes that befall regularly and in tumbles. Funny, isn’t, how such common feelings can raise themselves to such new and lucid dawnings depending on who’s talking through them. There’s a lot of Pollock that unravels in such wonderful sadness, just the same way that Aimee Mann presents it. Though not as helpless or trapped in their predicaments, Pollock’s characters – frequently semi-autobiographical, or more so than Mann’s – show themselves acting with forlorn eyes gazing straight off into the distance and sluggishly singing in parked cars in a torrential downpour or a rich person’s home the way the characters on Paul Thomas Anderson’s motion picture “Magnolia” do. There would never be frogs nailing windshields and streets and tin roofs as they substituted rain in Pollock’s songs and there would never be an admission at the end of the film saying, “But it did happen,” for the fantastical never really happens. She might paint someone’s face in sunshine and breezes, but Pollock stays away from the abstract and works with the colors that we’re all given right in front of us, right before our reaching fingers. She sings in a way that’s stripped of false mystifying and pretension – it’s frugal in its showiness, comfortable to just backstroke through the issues, not breathing hard, stroking the mattress of water too hard or putting up much of a splash, just being as forthright as possible. It’s as if she’s thrown open the shutters and emphatically tossed open the shades just to reveal a gray ass day outside, but before she allows herself the pitying party to stampede, she decides, “This will be the day that I catch up on all of the reading I’ve been meaning to do and I’ll heat up some homemade soup. It won’t be so bad kiddo.” It’s a cleansing record, this Watch the Fireworks, less climactic than the title would suggest, unless it means the dying embers falling like hot weeping willow branches quickly to the ground for burial, fading until they’re taken over by the night’s blackness. What’s not climactic in that though? Works for me.

First song
If Silence Means That Much To You (Emma Pollock) [3.73MB] [2300 downloads]


– original version appears on Watch the Fireworks
This was written in response to a long running family feud that I really wanted to try and fix but was forbidden to. It involved a single phone call that I didn’t even witness and to this day I still don’t understand exactly what happened. It still seems ridiculous to me that these things can happen and even more ridiculous that it has actually happened within my own family. I did eventually get the chance to speak to the parties concerned and failed miserably at improving things. I’ve always thought talking through a situation can always resolve it, but apparently not. I keep talking to the media about this song so one day my family’s bound to find out what it’s all about.

Second song
Acid Test (Emma Pollock) [3.50MB] [2213 downloads]


– original version appears on Watch the Fireworks
I wrote this on holiday in the Lake District in England whilst hanging about in the lodge by myself. I’d taken my guitar along just in case I managed to get some time alone and so managed to do just that and came up with the basic elements of “Acid Test.” It harks back to a daydream I used to have as a little girl. If I thought I fancied someone in class I would imagine me with them alone in a field and see how it made me feel. If good, then I fancied them, if bad then I didn’t. Bizarre, but it worked. I liked how the bar chords sounded on the acoustic guitar and how staccato they sounded. It can be a tricky one to play live as the tempo can fly off but it’s always good fun. Kurt from New Pornographers has been doing backing vocals for me on the tour we’re doing with them so I’ll really miss that when we go home.

Third song
Paper and Glue (Emma Pollock) [3.75MB] [2114 downloads]


– original version appears on Watch the Fireworks
My family moved house just when the last Delgados record came out in Oct. 2004 and the house was in a real state, but we had to go on tour almost immediately so couldn’t really do anything with it. Then shortly after the band split, and the house took on a bit of a depressing feel for me as I was pretty upset about it. I remember being aware that I really should be doing this house up but couldn’t find the motivation. It struck me how much I’d looked forward to moving there and now that I was there it wasn’t really that enjoyable at all. It is a great place to live though (southside of Glasgow) so I knew it had nothing to do with my surroundings, only my mood. One of the funny things about the neighbourhood is that everyone really clubs together when something threatens the peace and tranquility of the place. Our street is right next to a railway line and the owners of the line wanted to cut the trees down to stop the leaves from going onto the track. Everyone on the street was really upset about this and started a huge campaign to stop it. Eventually they did, but not before they’d cut down the oldest tree on the road. All the local children went out the night before it was cut down and glued bits of paper to it as some kind of tribute. It was all a bit Wicker Man.

Fourth song
Limbs (Emma Pollock) [3.75MB] [2058 downloads]


– original version appears on Watch the Fireworks
This song was inspired by a passage in the book The Book Of Revelations by the author Rupert Thomson. It tracks the abduction of a dancer in Amsterdam, his mental and physical torture during the capture and his subsequent release. He then tries to find his captors, becoming increasingly unhinged as he makes more and more false identifications. There is a scene in the book that has the main character visiting one of his former dance tutors on her death bed and he marvels at how much her body has been distorted and weakened by illness. I never got that scene out of my head and ended up writing “Limbs” as a result. It’s a favourite of mine to play live as it’s so delicate and it is a huge contrast to most of the set.

Emma Pollock Official Site
4AD Records