A Cracking Release
With all female solo singer/songwriters, you sense an unanimous aspiration towards top hits Katie Melua and Norah Jones. On first listen, the Cambridge University graduate looks not to break the mould, yet continue to pay attention and something is distinctly different about this one.
Polly Paulusma has fought family heartache on more than one occasion, battling through and releasing a pretty awesome reply to her critically acclaimed first album "Scissors in my Pocket". Supporting Jamie Cullum and Coldplay built up the young singer's profile, also performing at the popular Glastonbury festival in 2005. Yet all this work appeared to pay a price in Paulusma's private life. After two miscarriages, the workload emerged solely responsible, obviously difficult for Polly to take being that music had always been her life and such love for two separate projects so to speak, could not be feasible. This took its toll and the first album reflects traumatic times. "Therapeutic song writing", a self confession and an apt description of the first successful release, leaving the only question to put to Paulusma- can the second release follow such a raw, intense debut?
Recorded in less than five weeks, "Fingers and Thumbs", due for release on the 11th June is an honest reminiscent, feel good comeback, spreading the happiness that the natural birth of her daughter Valentine gave. "I've got little smile lines appearing and I feel like I've earned every one of those" Paulusma states, a far cry from "Every time I picked up a guitar, I felt like I was committing murder". And this is the difference. The new single, "Back to the Start" released on the 4th June is one of the album highlights, moving away from the huge sense of responsibility and guilt, instead racing back to the beginning and forgetting about the previous heartache. The rest of the album completes the passionate and personal package, with "Ready or Not" an individual feisty favourite.
Comparisons to Katie Melua and Australian female singer/songwriter Missy Higgins are evident in this new release, although working alongside her partner in personal and business life Ken Nelson, who has previously produced for Coldplay, Gomez and Badly Drawn Boy, attempts to divert Polly's sound from that of female classics. "Fingers and Thumbs" sounds uncannily like KT Tunstall's material, a copycat downside to the album.
Paulusma is now playing live dates throughout the U.K, spreading the new lease of life that she encountered from the birth of her birthday-sharing daughter. Being raised primarily on Joni Mitchell and Carole King definitely influenced this impressive second album. The pressure builds for the follow up release, and after all her struggle, Paulusma appears to have quite well. Is it brave to say I preferred this to the first?