I know that hard work has its rewards, and I’m not sure it’ll ever be that way for me’ — newly solo songstress Emma Pollack
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Much like Belle and Sebastian’s The Boy with the Arab Strap or Mogwai’s Young Team, The Delgados’ 2000 album The Great Eastern stands as one of the most critically heralded Scottish indie pop albums of the last decade. The problem is, as with the other four albums that The Delgados released, a relatively small number of people actually got around to hearing it. After a decade of hard work, loads of great music and far too little to show for it in return, The Delgados called it quits in 2004, citing frustration over their lack of commercial success as a major factor in their breakup.
Three years later, Emma Pollack, one of the band’s co-lead singers and songwriters, has decided to step back into the ring. Pollack has just released her first solo album, a lush collection of introspective tunes called Watch the Fireworks. While the record differs from her work with her former band — the music is often sparser and she doesn’t have Alun Woodward to share front person duties with — Pollock is still connected to her time in The Delgados. So connected, in fact, that she felt it necessary to sing about some of the particulars of the band’s breakup.
“’Fortune’ was written shortly after The Delgados broke up,” Pollock says. “A lot of that is about how sometimes work doesn’t have a correlation to success. And that’s what you’re taught at school, that if you work hard, you’re going to do well. But when you come out, that’s not necessarily something you can rely on. So it can be very difficult to accept. That’s something we struggled through with The Delgados for 10 years. It’s difficult, because everybody wants success. You measure it in different ways, but everybody has a will to get across to as many people as they can. Otherwise you wouldn’t release a record to the public in the first place.”
That struggle with commercial success might be even more psychologically challenging for a solo artist than a band. While Pollock is secure in her decision to go it alone, she does admit to a bit of concern about the prospect of recording and performing under her own name. She says that while she enjoys having a record comprised completely of her own songs, she’s already noticed that the pressures put on a solo artist by both audiences and the media make for a completely different game.
“It periodically freaks me out, even now, to be without the band,” she says. “I suppose I think about it far too much, but there is a difference in the way an audience perceives a band versus how they perceive a solo artist. With a solo artist, there’s much more interest in the individual, whereas with a band, the members can almost get away without giving up much about themselves at all. Interpol, for example — no one really asks who the individuals really are and what they’re like, and what they do with their family life. If you’ve got a solo artist, there’s a very definite focus on the individual as well as the music. So it is very different, and it’s something I’m getting used to.”
Still, with Watch the Fireworks and Pollock’s forthcoming tour of North America (most of the dates, including those in Calgary, will be supporting The New Pornographers), she’s prepared to face some of the same obstacles that she came across with the band. While she’s not exactly banking on huge fame and fortune with her solo venture, for now she’s willing to accept artistic satisfaction, even if it does mean throwing herself back into the fire that is the music industry.
“I must admit, I’m a glutton for punishment,” she says, laughing. “A lot of work can go into a record, but it doesn’t guarantee that you’ll make a single cent. And then there’s cases where someone will sit there one day and almost write a joke album and it can be one of the biggest surprise hits of the year. It’s the unpredictability of it that really riles me, because I like to be in control of my work. I like to know that hard work has its rewards and I’m not entirely sure that it’ll ever be that way for me.”
