From her Dickensian moniker right down to her Victorian-horror tinged lyrics (‘spit on my French knickers/and call me a whore’) London-based songwriter Polly Scattergood is gothic in the most classical English sense. Like a doll-house occupant brought to life with an adverse affection for warped horror (from David Lynch to, well, Vampire Weekend), her music is like a ninja trap house -all revolving walls, trap doors, and underground tunnels devised to help her true identity escape or hide from tangible identification. She’s got some lethal death stars for tunes and all. We talked to her about her shinobi skills, her lyrical smoke bombs, and why it’s not a good idea to carry weapons everywhere one travels…
One of your lyrics goes “I am a typical sinner with a knife in my back jean pocket.” Are you the reason for England’s knife-crime problem?
Do you know what? That lyric! At one point they were talking about wanting to change that one line. I live in London, and it’s the big thing at the minute. I couldn’t believe anybody would actually pick up that line as, like, an endorsement of knife crime. It’s the most horrible thing going on at the moment.
Kate Bush is probably the worst person in the world to be compared to, in terms of the expectations it raises. I suppose it’s like if you start making horror films on a handycam and somebody tells you you’re the next David Lynch. Do you feel an adverse amount of pressure on you when somebody mentions you two in the same breath?
Categorization of music makes it easier to understand, obviously, if you’ve never heard the artist before. So every female singer-songwriter with a piano that comes out tends to be compared to Kate Bush or Tori Amos. Obviously I’m flattered to be compared to musicians of that stature but, I think I’m much more me than I am them.
I think the one artist I most associate you with is actually Patrick Wolf – Not in terms of musical style, but the macabreness of your subject matter, and the sort of melodrama you employ. Is theatricality an important part of being Polly Scattergood?
It’s weird, I never really saw what I did as particularly theatrical. I like songs and stories to have a bit of humour in them, and I guess that my songs, in the way that I write them, tend to take on characters which adds up to being theatrical, and I guess that is an important part of what I do. But then… I don’t know, because live it’s quite a dark show that I need to introduce humour to to make it a lot less melodramatic. I put myself completely into the songs, so it doesn’t feel like I’m acting or putting on a show.
With your Pollyworld videos you’re letting us have a look at your own little universe, and your world-view… How does that world differ from everybody else’s?
We started off Pollyworld one day when me and my friend Tom got a Handycam and took it around London. Then we decided to cut it together on my laptop and put some of my music behind it. Then I started thinking it was a good way of allowing people to be more, sort of, immersed in this world that’s in my songs, but in a creative way rather than a more straightforward one.
I know you’re into Gregory Crewdson’s photography, which is all about fitting the surreal into modern life. Your own music seems to try and do the same thing. Since we live in such a demystified society, what relevance do you think the surreal still holds, and how does it fit into your life?
I 100% think that the fact that everything is so documented, and that there’s so little magic and mystery left in the world is sad. It should be integral to our lives, and our imaginations still need to be let loose. With Gregory Crewdson, his mystery is what drew me to his work – I wanted to understand his photographs but I never really could. I still can’t. You can draw these conclusions, but you’re never sure if they’re the “right” ones. That, for me, is what an artist should do. I don’t have any craving for anybody to really know anything about me. I would like people to make their own minds up about the content of my songs without worrying whether it’s autobiographical or not. I guess that’s part of the Pollyworld videos too. It’s about letting people in, and play around, without having to be obvious about everything.
What should we expect when we get our hands on a copy of your album?
Somebody the other day described it as “dark fairy tale nursery rhymes”. I like quite obvious melody, and sometimes I write quite simple lyrics. I like you to be able to have something memorable and easy to latch onto, but then if you want to delve deeper there’s a whole load of different textures and layers going on. Nursery rhymes are beautiful, but there’s something quite spooky about them…
Polly Scattergood plays Crawdaddy on the 21st April. Her non-knife-crime-endorsing debut album is out now on Mute.
