Caught in the Carousel

Polly Paulusma

Scissors in my Pocket
One Little Indian

Polly Paulusma, it seems, has always challenged authority to maintain her course. The word “defiance” is peppered throughout her biography, from parochial disobedience to bulldozing through the more conservative generations’ misconceptions of her role as both a promising mother and performing artist. While this surely illustrates a tough exterior, those quiet searching moments wrought with emotional confusion must have creeped in somewhere along the line, yielding much of the material on Fingers and Thumbs, a raw and uncensored album of great sensitivity. The charge behind this set of songs stems from the grievous details that followed the release of Paulusma’s first album, Scissors In My Pocket. After experiencing two miscarriages—the first, just two weeks after her album debut and the second, following her first tour—Fingers and Thumbs was soulfully and necessarily drained from both Paulusma's pen and guitar. The lyrics read like journal entries, often with posthumous encouragement. In “This One I Made For You,” Paulusma sings, “I’ve seen your heart, I know your name. So don’t go bailing out again,” fusing together the concepts of regret with prenatal expectation. Each song expresses the bitter resentment of losing two babies, and the bravery in finding ten songs. While often morose, the musical composition here teeters between lightlessness and illumination. Tracks like “All the Time” and “Godgrudge” skip along, allowing you to momentarily put down that box of Kleenex. Conversely, “This One I Made For You” slowly pulsates metronomically, like a stubborn yet struggling heartbeat. In “Matilda,” each depression of the piano key is a tragedy, replaying itself over a soft and almost hopeless voice. This is a deeply, almost severely personal album—each track is like eavesdropping on a therapy session with a water glass held to the door.

Caught In The Carousel Talks To Polly Paulusma:

Caught In The Carousel: Who is your ideal audience?

Polly Paulusma: Anyone that is really, really listening. Listening to the words. Lost in the music. I can’t stand it when people stand at the bar and talk loudly to their friends and then hear a gap when the music pauses and then clap. And I do it to people sometimes. I guess as a musician your job is to arrest, to make them stop, to arouse their curiosity, to break the stream of noise make them listen. It’s lovely when that happens. That’s the best one, actually—a previously talkative crowd brought to its knees and ordered to be silent. Very special!

CITC: What’s the most unusual or unique experience you have had on stage?

PP: I’ve got a strong memory from one of the first gigs I ever played, in an upstairs room in a sprawling old Victorian pub in Balham called the Bedford; it was a hot summer’s night and all the windows were open, and the pub’s top floor was level with the train lines outside. I had a song where there was a moment to pause; I was playing with two string players at the time; we reached the moment, and paused, slightly; but in the gap, right at that moment, a thunderous train exploded into the room. We paused, and paused, and paused... and the train died away, and we picked up the song again. It was one of those perfect moments when the train became a part of the song, and the song a part of the train, and it was like it was meant; you couldn’t have planned it that way. That was good.

CITC: Following the release of your first album what music were you most drawn to during that difficult point of your life?

PP: All this loud shit I’d never really been into before. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Kings of Leon. Neil Young all electric. Janis Joplin.

CITC: Have you begun working on your next album? What will you find for inspiration?

PP: Yes, I have. I don’t know yet; I’m right back at the beginning again. But I’m using some looping techniques I was developing as I write now which is leading me in a certain direction; and I’ve been getting very lost in choral and orchestral arrangements which is leading in another.... We’ll see what comes over the next year or so. I’m in no rush, though.

CITC: Is it difficult to play such emotional and personal songs onstage? How much of yourself do you put into your performance? Do you detach for self-protection?

PP: No, it’s not detachment. But you do get in a zone, find a place, and it’s hard to describe—it’s kind of half in half out. I’ve found on some nights, when I’ve emotionally been swimming in the songs, that they’ve not made the leap to the audience so easily; and other nights when I felt that I was drifting, perhaps not fully there, that they really leapt out and found their targets with people. It’s hard to say what that magic is, where it comes from, how it is controlled; I’m not sure anyone rightly knows. I’ve found with this album that the magic is in the tension between the sadness preserved like a mosquito in resin within the writing, within the words, and the joy of the music. Certainly in the album I can hear how happy I was to be recording; the music was a joy from start to finish; the musicians I played with were amazing and we were able to record the album incredibly quickly; we found a rhythm and it all just flowed; and I was pregnant recording too, and it was good to know that the story was to end happily. But it is always true emotion, even if remembered; I lived it, I was there, and you don’t forget that readily.

—Katie Cleland