Pitchfork

Photo by Sarah Roberts

Eleven years in the Delgados, and Emma Pollock never once donned so much as a skirt live.

"I had this rule, it was kind of like an anti-fashion thing," she revealed to Pitchfork recently. "Being in a band, I always had this thing about not wanting to be pushed forward as the only female in the band, so to go along with that I just wanted to blend in-- I didn't want to go walking around on stage dressed in ridiculously, overtly colorful dresses or anything like that."

Times have changed. "Now that I'm doing my own thing, I thought 'Oh, to hell with it, I'll do whatever I want!'"

Indeed, Pitchfork caught up with Pollock via phone whilst she was in the midst of, in her words, "introduc[ing] a bit more flair into my wardrobe"-- shopping for dresses mid-tour at a "retro clothes shop" in Birmingham, England.

At that point, Emma had "spied a couple of 60s dresses that have got ridiculous print on them that I normally wouldn't wear in everyday life-- but I think on stage they would work."

According to Pollock, the softening of her anti-fashion stance comes with the territory of being a solo artist. "It's much much easier to be personally understated within a band...but the solo thing automatically forces attention onto me as an individual. There's an element of it which is visual, and I suppose I feel a bit more comfortable with that now than I did before."

Indeed, the change in wardrobe reflects on Pollock's solo debut, Watch the Fireworks, out this September on 4AD. "It's totally, unashamedly pop and it doesn't pretend to be anything else," said Pollock.

"To be completely honest with you, I'm just a sucker for great pop songs. I love Sandie Shaw, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark-- a lot of the classic female singers. There was just something fresh about them, and their voices just seem to transcend anything else that you hear nowadays. But most importantly the songs-- just the way that they're effortlessly melodic, great production, really, really great fun."

To help whip her own pop songs into shape, Pollock teamed with producer Victor Van Vugt (Nick Cave, Mojave 3, Beth Orton).

As she enthused, "This whole thing grew out of a simple desire to write some more songs, and then suddenly I've got a record deal with 4AD which I'm absolutely over the moon about, and Victor Van Vugt was on the phone saying he wanted to produce it, and the whole thing just started growing legs."

Pollock praised Van Vugt for his hands-on approach. "Even though Delgados were produced by Dave Fridmann for two albums, it was always after the recording-- during the mix-- that Dave got involved. But this was actually a very, very, very collaborative effort between Victor, myself, and the rest of the actual recording band I had to put together.

"I had Victor more involved with the actual pre-production, like taking the songs apart and saying 'Okay, here's the essence of the song, but how could we improve the structure or how could we make it a great classic pop song?' and basically taking them apart a little bit and thinking, 'Okay, have we got as much out of this as we think we can?'"

First single "Adrenaline" came out last week. Built from a piano run Emma recorded into a little Dictaphone, it's, in her words, "the loudest song on the album," with "a bit of an odd structure-- it's not a traditional pop song in that respect."

Just don't call it "lovely."

"Even though I remember 'Adrenaline' as this immensely powerful song with this over-powering guitar, at the end of the day people are still describing it with words like 'lovely'...and I'm thinking, 'it's not a lovely song! It's an aggressive belt-whip of a song! Certainly in the concerts I'm sweating like a dog when I'm playing it! It's almost as if I'm running a bloody marathon-- I'll come off stage absolutely soaking. I'm sure it keeps me fit."

Makes those dresses practical too, no doubt.

Indeed, "lovely" might be a bit more apt to describe "Limbs", the track that precedes "Adrenaline" on Watch the Fireworks, presently available for download now on Emma's website (link below).

And however "aggressive" or "powerful" Emma's tunes, one constant remains her remarkable voice, which she's nurtured particularly since the Delgados parted ways.

"Over the past two years...I've actually had the opportunity to find a wee bit more out about what it is to actually sing with a bit of control and with a bit of dynamic. Not just carry a melody but also evoke a certain emotion or have a certain amount of control over the way that you're actually getting that melody across-- things that a lot of singers do effortlessly and that sound effortless, but I think it takes a little bit of time and experience to sing with that amount of control."

And what of Emma's former bandmates in the Delgados? "We're still really close," she said. Pollock also continues to have a hand in Chemikal Underground, the Glasgow-based label founded and run by the band.

Pollock and live band and dresses recently wrapped up a string of UK shows. She'll play a solo acoustic show alongside the rest of the Ballads of the Book crew this Saturday, June 2, at the Leith Book Festival in Leith, Scotland and at the Indian Summer Festival in Glasgow on July 14, and hopes to make it to the U.S. in the fall.

Watch the Fireworks:

01 New Land
02 Acid Test
03 Paper and 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 The Optimist