Polly Scattergood returns with her new single Red, the opening track of her forthcoming album ‘In This Moment.’ Written at Polly’s home studio on the Kent Coast, in stolen moments of creativity while her newborn baby girl slept, Red is awash with big production ideas and the clarion call to womankind. It is a track about taking ownership, standing up, and fighting back “we rage with the forcefield of a woman,” Polly sings, “and we rise / We’re the ghosts you can’t erase”.
“Red is a song about finding strength in something that could easily floor you. I tried to reflect the rage of the song within the instrumentation, pounding drums, driving intertwined synths and soundscapes, to set the scene.” says Polly. “Around the time of writing, there were a lot of inspiring, strong women creating waves that eventually turned into a tsunami, and so from my own studio by the sea I drew from my own experience to musically reflect upon it.”
Listen to ‘Red’ – BELOW:
After 2013’s “Arrows” and her collaborative 2016 project with Maps, onDeadWaves, Polly and her partner (fellow musician, producer and collaborator, Glenn Kerrigan) left the bustle of London for the desert in Fuerteventura. Polly craved light and space, quietness and peace. Getting away from the flashing neon of the city, and modern life’s dizzying virtual distractions, felt very urgent. “I wanted to drop off the planet for a while”, she says, three years on. “I wanted to start again. And disappear.“
And she did. Polly found the distance she craved in the sand and the heat. Goats wandering past her house instead of rumbling Routemaster buses. She describes that time as feeling like a “breath in her life”. Then, unexpectedly, another breath entered her world – a baby daughter. Becoming a mother was an experience which focused Polly’s creativity intensely. They moved to a house on the Kent coast and, while their little girl slept, Polly would go into to home studio and write, cocooning herself in headphones. Here, alongside producer and collaborator Glenn Kerrigan they’d experiment with new sounds, styles of singing, and whispering into her new microphone with its in-built, pop shield. They blended in field recordings of their new and old lives: of fires crackling, of the movement of the sea, of bells, and of breathing. This creativity would happen at all times of day and night. Everything felt immediate to Polly, deeply intimate, entirely real.
“In This Moment” is an album inspired by travel, soundtracks, Scandinavian films, and music that transports people to very different worlds; the kind of music that makes the listener shut their eyes and be taken on a journey.
Her new album ‘In This Moment’ is released on 1st May, and available for pre-order now
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