Ah, the female singer-songwriter. Clearly history has shown women can be powerful writers of love and heartbreak (Dolly Parton, Tammy Wynette), intelligent folk pioneers (Emmylou Harris, Joni Mitchell) or even punk-rockers with the odd foray into mainstream (Patti Smith, The Go Gos). The eighties/early nineties continued the trend with a healthy batch of ‘girls with guitars’ - usually acoustic - pedalling the mainstream with actually decently received songs - like Joan Armatrading, Suzanne Vega, Eddi Reader, Tasmin Archer, Sheryl Crow, and Shawn Colvin to name but a few.
There also seems to be a trend of copyists; Kate Bush has Tori Amos leeching off her act whilst she hid herself away for over a decade, Dido is a more ‘coffee table’ version of Sarah Mclachlan, and Alanis Morrissette would have been the mid-nineties answer to Patti Smith, if the album hadn’t been so well produced.
In the present day, there appears to be a shift. In the past, artistes like Vega,
Similarly Sharleen Spiteri of Texas and Jill Jackson (of the now defunct Speedway) offered plenty of front, but rarely backed it up with anything more than mediocre sounding records. New darling KT Tunstall debuted on Later with Jools in 2004 using the breathtakingly original step of using the loop sampler to create her own backing track, but with the last two singles, has descended into David Gray territory - soulless and devoid of the quirks that introduced her to the world.
Pity then Nerina Pallot. Pronounced ‘pall-oh’, she began at the rather ancient age of 26 with a Radio 2 friendly ‘Dear Frustrated Superstar’ offering up jolly tunes set to miserable scenarios - usually about men. It was decent, but not supported enough by the record company it would appear. In the downtime, she attended an English college for verbal enrichment, decided she would get back on the horse, and began work on her next album. Recorded and produced at former Revolutioner Wendy Melvoin’s home, and featuring a who’s who of talented musos, ‘Fires’ was ignited.
So how does it stack up? Well it tends to follow the same sound as the first record. Lead single, Everybody Gone to War is a sprightly tune that attacks UK’s involvement whilst brandishing a feather duster. Incredibly light and charming; upbeat melody juxtaposed with blunt lyrics. Damascus and Idaho follow a similar vein with well written melodies and soft vocals married with at time quite harsh lyrics. Idaho is a stance against not being herself, whilst searching for the perfect environment for her to fit in. Damascus is a song about discovery and transition, and perhaps a lack of commitment to monogamy (hell my intimate friend, and hell is other people’s hearts), and surviving against adversity.
All good people appears to be an aspiration to be flawless, to not be rattled by the vagaries of life like having to understand a partner’s body language, and dealing with what they subsequently say. Geek Love surprised me to say the least; very much in the mould of early Billy Joel, and seems very much to be about the idiosyncrasies of meeting a soulmate. It flirts with infidelity but seems to be more about Pallot’s own romantic love desires, (Hey you could you give it a rest, just take me home and get me undressed) and probably related to remarks in interviews about her dalliance in a relationship with an American (the way that you say ‘color’ not ‘colour’). It is, however, when we get to the piano only accompaniment of Sophia, we only get to see Pallot’s true potential. The bare lament is when you finally get a clear distinctive character seeping out of the record.
The true pain that hit someone like Shawn Colvin, who struggled with alcholicism and depression in her twenties as a hitherto unknown artist who was mentored by Suzanne Vega, before winning acclaim in her own right with the 1997 album - “A few small repairs”, collecting two Grammys that year at the age of 42. Pallot tells her stories with such uplifting music, It feels like you’re listening to the female Gilbert O’Sullivan, but less abstract.
“Fires” is well written, and in as close a songwriting proximity as her main hero Joni Mitchell. It will no doubt please existing fans, but in terms of shifting units it is hard to put a finger on why Pallot does not occupy the same area of the charts as Tunstall, or a Spiteri. Perhaps she needs to be more sexy and more vague. Of course Colvin’s success bucked the trend for mainstream female artists, and proved there can be exceptions to the rule, but hers was a tale of musical obscurity which was rewarded with success in the end.
Sometimes you have to suffer, and show you’ve suffered to make a record really resonate in the room, and there are signs that could happen for Pallot, but musically it has to stop being so nice.
Craig Aston.
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