How to explain the nine years that have passed since In Search Of Harperfield, Emma Pollock’s self-acknowledged “best received” album in her 30 years as the vanguard of the Scottish underground? In her own words: “start at the beginning until you sing sunlight” – an oblique, poetic fragment that at its core captures the essence of a tumultuous journey of self-discovery, captured in all its light and shade on the songwriter’s fourth solo album.
A tumultuous journey of self-discovery
How to explain the nine years that have passed since In Search Of Harperfield, Emma Pollock’s self-acknowledged “best received” album in her 30 years as the vanguard of the Scottish underground? In her own words: “start at the beginning until you sing sunlight” – an oblique, poetic fragment that at its core captures the essence of a tumultuous journey of self-discovery, captured in all its light and shade on the songwriter’s fourth solo album.
Recorded in the safe spaces around and after pandemic lockdowns, Begging The Night To Take Hold was shelved while The Delgados – the band formed by Pollock and three friends in ’90s Glasgow which, through its Chemikal Underground label and studio, continues to underpin much of the city’s music scene – embarked on a triumphant reunion tour, including sets at Primavera in Barcelona and their hometown’s open-air Kelvingrove Bandstand. As she prepared to return to the record and the intense grief of her father’s sudden death that informed much of its writing, Pollock obtained a post-menopause autism diagnosis, and found some answers to the questions she had begun to ask herself about her place in the world.
Pollock is in motion on much of this record
Opener “Prize Hunter” captures this journey towards self-awareness acutely. Although written and recorded, like the rest of the album, pre-diagnosis, in hindsight it resonates like Pollock’s conversation with her interior voice. “All the words and numbers you could want,” she sings over a see-sawing bass riff, searching for patterns in an attempt to make sense of the world around her, “but I sometimes wonder if they endanger my health.” As the song warms up, the static of the bass is replaced by a rich, sonorous cello, a compositionally perfect rendering of the quest towards deeper meaning.
Indeed, Pollock is in motion on much of this record: drilling down into her psyche; pacing through moments of psychological distress; seeking comfort in the familiar surroundings of her childhood stomping grounds in southern Scotland; layering the Marchtown of Mary, Queen of Scots with the modern-day Strathbungo on Glasgow’s southside, where she now lives. In the midst of the conflict with a loved one which informs the elegant, tormented “Rapid Rush Of Red” she names this pattern, her recognition the first step to seeking compromise and resolution: “Is it possible to train a sprinter to slow down, or a dancer to stay standing when the music comes around?” she ponders, over a lush musical backdrop that is part-chamber orchestra, part-Scott Walker. The music swells to a crescendo, resisting an easy conclusion: “I wish to find another colour and paint with that instead.”
At the journey’s end, there are no easy answers
Although working with only a tight-knit group of collaborators – Graeme Smilie, returning from …Harperfield, on piano and bass, cellist Pete Harvey of Modern Studies and producer, Delgados bandmate and husband Paul Savage adding drums – this set of songs are Pollock’s richest and most melodic. Her dusky alto voice, once compared to Dusty Springfield, is weighty with newfound wisdom, ushering the listener to come closer where the subject matter shifts from the confessional to more straightforward narrative storytelling. On “Marchtown” she interweaves Queen Mary’s defeat at the 16th-century Battle of Langside with the contemporary surroundings of her own battle with her demons, the sonics switching from chamber music to anxious synthesiser with the shift between timelines. Later, she wanders the gardens of the Galloway home to which reclusive artist Jessie M King relocated when they fled from wartime Paris, on “Jessie My Queen”. “You have the most ironic of the surnames,” Pollock sings in a gently playful tone. “They buried you, nothing but your husband’s wife.”
“Black Magnetic”, from which the album’s title is drawn, is its thematic heart. As Pollock begs “the night to take hold, offer up its anaesthetic” and relieve her of her head’s swirling chaos, given voice by Smilie and Harvey’s discomfiting piano and cello parts, she spots a group of teenage girls whose chatter prompts a confrontation with her teenage self, on the cusp of her new life in Glasgow. The elder Pollock threatens to take off her shoes and run into the Atlantic waves – but stops short, as does the music, on the precipice of realisation.
At the journey’s end, there are no easy answers: “I Used To Be A Silhouette” is stripped back and sombre, fluttering harmonics stopping the loveliness of the main cello part from landing and Pollock’s voice becoming ever more anguished as she repeats the refrain. As she contemplates her losses, the music fades to an intentional stillness – with whatever comes next an open question.
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