Polly Paulusma releases sublime new single 'Snakeskin'

Polly Paulusma   Album ‘The Pivot On Which The World Turns’ out September 30th Wild Sound / One Little Independent Records   Single and video ‘Snakeskin’ out now   Smartlink Spotify Youtube

“Outstanding” – The Telegraph   “Complete, pure and personal” – MOJO   “Enchanting understated, intelligent folk pop” – Rolling Stone   Polly Paulusma follows up her critically acclaimed 2021 album ‘Invisible Music’ with ‘The Pivot On Which The World Turns’ out September 30th via One Little Independent folk subsidiary Wild Sound.   Affectionately shortened to ‘Pivot’, the album marks a return to her singular brand of insightful songs that, in their subject matter, roam around the badlands of love, sex and parenthood, death and grief, failure and success, violence and healing. Most poignantly the album focuses on the roles of women, in our lives and across history, from a variety of perspectives. As always, she delights in the telling of stories, with littered spoken word aiding her as she utilizes infectious melodies and a light delivery to explore her characters.   Of her sublime new single ‘Snakeskin’ Polly tells us; “This album charts a development for me through all the roles I pivot on in a day, a week, a year, a decade — and so it seemed appropriate to start with this song, in which I am the daughter. And here I preserve the last moments I experienced of my father’s life. I wrote this song in my head in the moments just after he passed away, although it took a while longer for the song to emerge. I was holding his hand as he went cold, and in the song I’m describing what it felt like. The instrumentation is necessarily sparse. I just had to sing it. John Parker and I got this down in one take. It was like - yup, done, just me and him. There’s a rawness to the modal guitar tuning DADDAD that I seem to return to like a recurring dream when I’m really wanting to touch a nerve”.   The product of a decade of writing, she tells us that “the album’s title ‘The Pivot On Which The World Turns’ is a corruption of a moment in the Russian novel Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, in which Stepan Arkadyitch knowingly confesses, “women, my boy, they’re the pivot everything turns upon”. In context, Stepan and Levin are discussing romantic relationships, but I saw wider interpretations of this epithet”.   Each track on the LP examines a different aspect of life that women play, and “charts a development for me through all the roles I pivot on in a day, a week, a year, a decade”. ‘Snakeskin’ represents the daughter, ‘Back Of Your Hand’ is the love interest, ‘Dirty Circus’ the mother and so on. “I truly believe, having travelled the last few years, having endured grief and horror and having discovered and pivoted on all these people that I am capable of being, that by learning how to love, and re-learning, and learning again, so many of the wartier and knobblier parts of me can be forgiven, and translated into something better”.   The album began life as a 24-track collaboration between friends producing a song a month to keep Polly songwriting while she finished her PHD, as such it features co-writes with Kathryn Williams, David Ford, and the novelist Laura Barnett. “I culled down the original burgeoning song pile, and then some new songs popped out. They keep doing that, but you have to draw a line somewhere.”   ‘Pivot’ is the fifth studio album and the ninth release from the indie-folk stalwart whose thought-provoking albums since 2004’s ‘Scissors In My Pocket’ have earned her plaudits from international champions as far flung as Nic Harcourt at KCRW in LA and Michele Manzotti in Italy, as well as homegrown accolades from Mark Radcliffe (BBC Radio 2) and The Guardian.   Polly is also a producer and label founder — her own label Wild Sound released records from nine other artists between 2012-2016 before becoming a folk imprint at OLI. She self-produced and recorded ‘Pivot’ from her garden shed, with the exception of three days in studio for bass, drums, and strings, and she has directed and filmed all her own music videos for the project. Her academic book ‘Angela Carter and Folk Song: ‘Invisible Music’, prose, and the art of canorography’ is coming out in December via Bloomsbury Academic.   Paulusma has toured the world supporting Bob Dylan, Jamie Cullum, The Divine Comedy and Marianne Faithfull, and played Glastonbury, T in the Park, V Festival and Cambridge Folk Festival among many others, touring the USA and Italy. She signed to Sony/ATV in LA and opened for Coldplay at their secret show at The Troubadour in West Hollywood.   ‘The Pivot On Which The World Turns’ will be accompanied by a sister album which will follow-up its predecessor and continue its themes.   Photo credit: Annie Dressner   Art credit: Mick Paulusma   Tracklist:   Snakeskin Back Of Your Hand Dirty Circus Luminary Bracklesham Bay Any Other Way Brambles And Briars The Big Sky Tired Old Eyes Sullen Volcano Robin   Live dates   29 Sept – Birmingham - Kitchen Garden Cafe 30 Sept – Manchester - Gullivers 01 Oct – Barton-on-Humber - The Ropewalk 02 Oct – Hull - Wrecking Ball Arts Centre 04 Oct – Cambridge - J2 05 Oct – London - Green Note 06 Oct – Winchester - Railway Inn 13 Oct – Oundle – Talbot Hotel 14 Oct – Great Ayton, Yorks - Velveteen Rabbit 15 Oct – Leeds - Arts Centre 29 Oct – Shoreham-on-Sea - Ropetackle Arts Centre   Follow:   Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Spotify