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Emma Pollock - Watch the Fireworks (2007)

Pollock is a former member of Glasgow legends The Delgados, and a founder of their pioneering Chemikal Underground record label. This debut combines lyrical twists and radiant melodies into a gorgeous and organic whole. The songs are fresh, modern, and personal, deftly constructed and littered with great hooks. "Emma Pollock has a terrific voice - slightly scuffed and casually soulful" - Time Out London.

Tracks:

01. New Land

02. Acid Test

03. Paper & Glue

04. Limbs

05. Adrenaline

06. If Silence Means That Much To You

07. Fortune

08. You'll Come Around

09. This Rope's Getting Tighter

10. Here Comes The Heartbreak

11. Optimist, The

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Emma Pollock is a Scottish singer, songwriter, and guitarist. She was a founding member of The Delgados. She signed a solo recording contract with the 4AD Records label in 2005 after the amicable split of the band.

She has recently started touring again and is due to release her first solo album, Watch The Fireworks, in September 2007.

Former Delgados member. Signed to 4AD Records as a solo artist in June 2005 after having major panic attack about what to do after band split. It was either that or b*gger off out of the music industry altogether and go and find work that I would probably walk out of within a month.

Considered putting out an album on Chemikal Underground for about 5mins and then figured out that asking my freshly ex-band mates to put out my solo record may be a little odd for us all so I then went to look elsewhere and as Delgados had a history with the Beggars Group of labels (Mantra put out our albums outside the UK) I ended up with a deal with 4AD which i'm delighted about as I've been a fan of the label since I left school.

I wrote much of the first solo album in 2005 immediately following the band's split and by March 2006, myself, Paul Savage, Jamie Savage (Paul's brother) and Campbell McNeil (Aereogramme) were all ready to go into our newly built studio Chem19 in Blantyre, outside Glasgow to record the album. We had Victor Van Vugt producing, and the weeks that followed were some of the most fun and stressful I've every known. I ended up spending weeks on guitars after Victor had left and by July was ready to go over for final mixing in New York for a week. That was great fun and one of the few times I've had time to just walk around in the city without being stressed out about playing a gig in a few hours.

The album is now finished. It is called 'Watch The Fireworks' and will be released in September. The first single from the album, 'Adrenaline' has just been released and the next single 'Acid Test' will be released in August.

Having devoted a decade to her Mercury Music Prize-nominated band The Delgados, Emma Pollock returns as a revitalized & fully independent artist with her ‘Watch The Fireworks’ album, released on September 11th. And, blessed with an arsenal of talent and a wealth experience, she’s come up with a truly impressive solo debut. As the recent first single and radio success “Adrenaline” showed – and the gorgeous forthcoming “Acid Test” single underlines - Emma’s songwriting combines wide-eyed melody and thoughtful lyrics to thoroughly beguiling effect; ‘Watch The Fireworks’ is a dazzling record that demands attention.

Written by Emma and produced by Victor Van Vugt (Nick Cave, PJ Harvey and Beth Orton), the eagerly anticipated album was mixed by Grammy-nominated Jeremy Wheatley, whose previous credits include Razorlight and Corinne Bailey Rae amongst a host of other successes. Offering 11 tracks of effervescent melody, it’s an exciting new chapter in the singer / songwriter’s already-impressive career.

Hailed as one of most influential bands of their time, The Delgados formed in Scotland back in 1994 and were a firm favorite of the legendary John Peel, recording more than ten live sessions for his landmark Radio 1 show. The Delgados founded and ran their own independent label - Chemikal Underground - whose discoveries included Mogwai, Bis and Arab Strap – and released five critically acclaimed albums, including 2000’s Mercury Music Prize-nominated ‘The Great Eastern’, before disbanding in 2006.

“I grew up in Castle Douglas and never got to see any bands, ever,” remembers Emma. “I was by no means a musician until my early twenties when I moved to Glasgow University and started going to gigs. I was always really into music, but that took my blinkers off. I did an awful lot of catching up, which inspired me. I taught myself guitar by copying the bass lines from New Order songs … and the Delgados followed shortly after.”

It was only after the band’s impromptu final performance that Emma considered the possibility of a solo venture. “It did feel like a divorce,” she says. “Our last show happened without any fanfare, because we didn't know that’s what it was. There was no real closure - for fans or me personally - so it was an odd situation. I always took a bit of a back seat before, so the process is much more intense now. It’s daunting because it's clearly all about one person, but I’m ready.”

Now, signed to 4AD, Emma was clear on the vision that would mark her debut. “I love pop music that's done intelligently,” she says. “While it does have its darker moments, with tracks like ‘The Optimist’ and ‘Limbs’, this album is essentially out-and-out pop. It’s a very different record to anything I’ve done before”.

Lyrically personal and anecdotal, ‘Watch The Fireworks’ is an album about the complexities of life and human behavior. “It's nothing people can't identify with - it's all pretty ordinary stuff, but that's the whole point. This record is really about ordinary, everyday life...which is anything but ordinary!”

“I tend to make a patchwork quilt from songs. They can be inspired by a multitude of things. The first line in ‘Acid Test’ is "this house does not feel like a home" - that stemmed from the fall-out of the Delgados. I felt a loss of contentment. My family had moved into a house that needed renovation, but I couldn’t motivate myself because my head was to too full. I needed to pour it out into an album.”

Highlights of ‘Watch The Fireworks’ include the giddy, celebratory, waltzing opener “New Land”, the relentlessly energetic lead-off single “Adrenaline”, and the piano-driven “Paper & Glue” – the beating heart of the album and a surefire future classic. That “If Silence Means That Much To You” was written about a feud between Emma’s mother and grandmother gives an indication of the record’s lyrical range.

“A lot of life is unbelievably difficult to comprehend or understand, but it's lovely to pick up a physics book and take comfort in its absolute nature. There's a reassuring predictability. It's lovely to lose yourself in that. It's much like music – it’s bigger than life and gives us perspective.”

A rowdy but good-natured crowd greeted Emma Pollock in Edinburgh. Road-testing tracks from her forthcoming debut solo album, Watch the Fireworks, the Glasgow-based singer-songwriter was effectively playing her official Scottish comeback show more than two years after the demise of her previous band, the Delgados. But she initially seemed a little thrown by the boisterous reception. “Why are you laughing?” she asked anxiously. “We seem to have got off to a bad start already . . .” Fortunately, Pollock then launched into a loud and commanding performance, instantly banishing the slightly apologetic air that sometimes attended Delgados shows.

Although she has played a handful of solo shows already, the singer has only recently augmented her backing band to a fully amplified three-piece. Opening with the bruised country-rock waltz of New Land, this set was largely composed of muscle and grit, emotional as well as musical.

The solo Pollock is a more direct prospect than her mercurial former band. Tapping into a tough-but-tender lineage stretching from Patsy Cline to Cerys Mathews, her voice has a warm and languid quality which sometimes belies its power. In Edinburgh she sounded dreamily Celtic one minute, stridently mid-Atlantic the next. Much of her set, from the stomping Adrenaline to the mournful Fortune, aspired to timeless traditionalism.

There is certainly more than a passing nod to 1960s girl-group pop in Watch the Fireworks, all bustling arrangements and sulky defiance. Some of the numbers Pollock played could almost have been vintage Phil Spector productions – especially the rousing, chiming, instantly infectious Here Comes the Heartbreak.

Outside her own songwriting, Pollock also collaborates on literary projects, mostly setting poetry to music. Here she switched to her acoustic guitar for the quietly barbed A Glorious Day, poet Brendan Cleary’s preemptive celebration of the day when his ex-girlfriend dumps her new lover. An elegant act of speculative revenge served suitably cold, yet deceptively sweet.

After the speedy melodic wallop of her imminent new single, Acid Test, Pollock ended on a graceful note with the finger-picking folk-pop ballad, The Optimist. For once, even the most rowdy crowd members were hushed.

The Times, August 14, 2007

Original News:

Scottish songtress and founding member of the Delgados Emma Pollock is about to unveil her debut solo album, 'Watch the Fireworks.' From that album she offers up 'Acid Test,' the second video. "I wanted to bring in the image of a younger girl looking forward to what she considered her ideal life might feel like," Pollock tells Spinner, "and how she would put it all together and who she envisaged would live in it with her." The unique concept and the young girl, Rose, were brought to life by director Lucy Cash.

Emma Pollock, 'Acid Test.' 03:50

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