Polly Paulusma - London Bush Hall - 5/5/04
4/5
By: Kevin Molloy
Set-List: 'Give it Back', 'She Moves in Secret Ways', 'Over The Hill', 'Perfect 4/4', 'Anywhere from Here', 'I Was Made To Love You', 'Carry Me Home', 'Mea Culpa', 'Dark Side', 'Something To Remember Me By', ENCORE, 'One Day'.
The ground beneath your feet is shaking, your pint visibly disturbed on the table. And you're a little confused, given that your line of sight encompasses only audience members sat, similarly, at their tables, and a rather pretty girl on the stage with an acoustic guitar. For a moment you wonder if, as Carole King so famously sang, you're feeling the earth move under your feet... but in fact this curly-haired songstress is merely stamping with such forceful enjoyment in her simple chords, you can feel it three rows back.
The smile on her face, the rhythmic strumming and her exemplary stomping already have most tapping their feet, but it's now that it kicks in: her voice has been slowly turning attention from the bar with its palpable honesty and melody, but it suddenly breaks into full flight, along with the drums and double-bass you hadn't noticed before... and it's indefinably breathtaking.
What it might be is the contrast. Polly Paulusma's been blessed with many talents... superb songsmithery and lyrics, the looks and locks of a Greek goddess, and angelic tone. But she also laughs as abrasively as a cockney cab-driver, screws her face up like a leprechaun when she's enjoying herself, and describes having her own guitar technician as 'like wiping your ass with silk'. Her outfit is a shimmering display of flawless wardrobe, until rockfeedback catch a glimpse of her trainers as she walks to the piano.
These attractive contradictions are not in such evidence in her songs, however. Every number Polly sings is simultaneously heart-rendingly and heart-warmingly sincere. In 'Mea Culpa', a song of rail-track suicide, she's practically in tears, emotion welling in her voice. It's a mood she revisits later, but elsewhere she's vibrant and grinning, singing of love for old loves with infectious happiness.
It is, in fact, a string-quartet, hired in for the night's performance, which provides the most captivating moment. Abandoning both guitar and piano for the encore, we're left with an exquisite rendering of 'Perfect 4/4', with but the quartet and Polly's tortured vocals echoing the agonies of the song's hospitalised subject. But, best of all, even with such an unfathomable well of empathy and a beneficent muse, she still can't help but introduce the song by exclaiming, 'Ah bollocks, it's the last one'.
The gig ends as it should: Polly's debut album, 'Scissors In My Pocket' sells out, and those who already own it are left with the pang of desire for more material, despite it only having been released last month. The girl is certainly on the train to acclaim. But there's that feeling in your stomach, as if something internally has been challenged and changed during the course of the night, that leaves you confident that Polly Paulusma could soon move on to become groundbreaking, not long to be content with merely moving the earth beneath our feet.
Artists in this article: Polly Paulusma
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