Polly Scattergood, Not a Prescription For All

Freshman release sounds just like that: lamentably fresh.

Polly Scattergood
Polly Scattergood
Mute
Release Date: May 19, 2009

The eponymous debut from the United Kingdom’s Polly Scattergood is equal parts a pleasant surprise and a familiar disappointment.  The twenty-one year-old Scattergood deserves credit for writing electro-pop tunes that are sonically sophisticated and aurally pleasing.  The fact that her debut album is out now via Mute, a subsidiary of the major label EMI, means that the suits saw potential and snatched Scattergood before any of the other majors could.  The album highlights Scattergood’s potential and showcases her ability to craft fine-tuned pop songs, but it ultimately falls short because of a few familiar disappointments.

First, the boring songs go on far too long and the pleasing, promising ones are stopped short.  With its ambient swirls of sound and tight club beat, I could have listened to “I Am Strong” for another five minutes and been hooked the whole time.  On the contrary, I was already sick of “Poem Song” before the track reached the four minute mark, but it still had one overly-dramatic, full-throated wail and two minutes and seventeen seconds of song left for me to trudge through.

Second, Scattergood’s electro-pop isn’t just mood music, it’s moody music.  Polly Scattergood could double as Debbie Downer and no one would notice.  Her brutally frank and painfully personal lyrics will doubtlessly win over certain fans, but they also made the album a bore after just a handful of songs.  Like prescription medicine, I had to take Polly Scattergood in small doses and couldn’t overdo it.  As hard as I tried, I never once pushed through the entire album in one sitting because the entire formula became boring and depressing.

“I Hate The Way,” the opening track, actually serves as decent microcosm for the album as a whole.  At seven minutes and seven seconds and featuring three different movements, the song is much too long and terribly scatterbrained.  Vocally, Scattergood is alternately hushed in a creepy whisper, strong-winded and then suddenly much more British-sounding and “broken” in her voice.  Topics range from a kiss that draws blood to  “a dark place up ahead” and from a doctor’s order to sing a “happy tune” to what certainly sounds like an eating disorder. 

“Please Don’t Touch” was actually my first encounter with Polly Scattergood, but not in its original form as featured on the album.  New York’s The Golden Filter, in its competition for remixers of the decade, released three different remixes of the song, each slightly different but all accomplishing the same thing: making “Please Don’t Touch” as creepy as its lyrics demand.  Since The Golden Filter is itself fronted by a blonde girl with a whisper of a voice, the band knew exactly what to do with Polly Scattergood’s tune.  In the so-called “Vocal Mix,” they placed Polly’s vocals in an echoey cave, chimed up the tubular bells, switched on their synthesizers, punched in a groovy bassline and pounded out some breathtaking percussion.  On the album, Scattergood’s own track is divided against itself, its creepy lyrics in tact but backed by a bright and sunny chorus complete with hand claps.

For all the negative aspects of Scattergood’s album, moments of promise, even perfection, are present on tracks like “I Am Strong” and “Bunny Club.” I would love to see how Four Tet or Jacknife Lee would remix “I Am Strong.” I enjoyed how the synthesizers swirled, stabbed and bled into one another on “Bunny Club.” Perhaps that’s the problem with Polly Scattergood’s album all along: the moments of promise and perfection are so good that they establish high expectations.  When the mediocre or bad parts come along, they feel that much worse in comparison.  As for Polly Scattergood, perhaps with time comes a bit more emotional maturity, with album sales comes a better producer and with both under her belt, perhaps a solid sophomore release.