While Lady Gaga and Regina Spektor have recently snagged the Stateside mantle of edgy, left-of-center female vocalists making notable waves on the mainstream charts, in the UK that honor is split in fifteen different directions among an impressive cadre of gifted young women: Little Boots, Elly Jackson (La Roux), Lily Allen, M.I.A., Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine and more. Another distinctive voice in the UK’s long line of idiosyncratic singers is Polly Scattergood who, along with willowy powerhouse Natasha Kahn of Bat for Lashes, follows in the more unpredictable footsteps of dramatic forebears like Tori Amos or Beth Gibbons of Portishead.
Scattergood’s self-titled debut, which dropped in the States earlier this spring, skitters from fragile confessional asides to abrasive challenges that are as blunt as a Sylvia Plath verse. Though there’s a breathy, girlish piquancy to her voice, Scattergood, 22, utilizes it with precocious confidence, hurtling from ebullient pop gems (“Please Don’t Touch”) to eviscerated lullabies (“Poem Song”) to heart-on-my-bloody-fucking-sleeve anthems (“Unforgiving Arms”).
Whittled down from an estimated 800 songs that Scattergood has written since her early teens, there’s a distorted, cinematic texture to the ten songs on the debut, a quality that Scattergood told Uncensored Interview, via email, likely reflects how her peripatetic mind works, awash with fragments of music, film and art that she’s encountered. She cites influences as diverse as This is England director Shane Meadows (“I love the lighting he uses”) and Leonard Cohen.
“I see things that inspire me to write,” says Scattergood, “and sometimes I write things that spark off images in my head. I love artists like Gregory Crewdson. People often say his images have a very cinematic quality to them; they are certainly very dark and surreal. My dream is to score a film. I would love to work on any Meadows film…I also love the work of Tim Burton and David Lynch.”
The daughter of an actor and visual artist, Scattergood, who grew up in Wivenhoe, Essex, attended London’s acclaimed Brit School in Croyden, known for producing ambitious alumni like Kate Nash, Adele, Amy Winehouse, the Kooks’ Luke Pritchard and Leona Lewis. Scattergood admits to being an outsider in that milieu. On her own since 16 years old and supporting herself with odd jobs, she applied to the Brit School when, unable to read music, she was turned down by her local sixth form college.
“The Brit School is a free school [and they didn’t care] if I could or couldn’t read music,” Scattergood explained. “They just want to see a passion for music, and I had that, so I got in. I found it an interesting experience. I enjoyed being around other creative people, and I made full use of having access to a piano and other instruments. I didn’t totally fit in, as writing was where my heart was.”
While songs like the single “Nitrogen Pink,” its surreal lyrics growling with images of “sweet rotting memories,” are refuted as being autobiographical–that track is based on a distant acquaintance’s battle with cancer–Scattergood explains that music was the way she expressed herself as a teenager. Now as a young adult, that need has become a sort of “addiction.”
“When I write a song, I never think ‘this could be heard by someone,’” says Scattergood, whose fey surname is a pseudonym. “I just write it for myself, and I try and take that attitude with me when I am on stage. Ultimately I do it for myself because it is what I do. I think if I started thinking that other people were watching me or listening, it would really effect me, and probably be quite destructive.”
Working with producer Simon Fisher Turner, a former teen heartthrob turned musician, Scattergood cobbled together the songs for her debut album from the hundreds she had penned, songs she views as “a journey.” And she vividly remembers the seed of every composition:
“‘I Hate The Way’ was written when I was 17 on a toy keyboard in a bedsit in Selhurst,” she recalls. “’Nitrogen Pink’ was written on a piano in a white box in Streatham, ‘Untitled 27’ was written in the [Mute Records] studio on the Harrow Road. I am the constant but they are all different, some good and some not so good. But the fact they are all together sitting on a record, that’s something I feel quite proud of I suppose.”
Scattergood is spending the summer close to home; she plays the iTunes Festival in London on July 19th and will travel to the Isle of Wright for BBC Radio 1 DJ Rob da Bank’s Bestival in mid-September. Looking ahead to the autumn, the slight blonde singer, who travels on tour with a bottle of brandy to soothe her insomnia and a radio (“I find the sound of a radio really comforting”), dreams of touring the States:
“I once set foot in Newark for about a hour whilst ‘in transit’ to Costa Rica! As a child I would see films set in America on the TV, and it was this far away land that always seems so full of adventures. So many people say I will love it. I just can’t wait for the day I get to come over and see it with my own eyes.”
Polly Scattergood’s eponymous debut is available now on Mute Records
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