From the "music I love immediately and intensely" file: the self-titled debut from Polly Scattergood, the latest successor to those Kate Bush comparisons that are suddenly in vogue thanks to St. Vincent and Bat For Lashes. Scattergood's debut also invites comparisons to a whole host of other moody songwriters, touching on Lily Allen's spunky pop, Lykke Li's electronic brain twisters and Joanna Newsom's elfin requiems.
If that seems a bit manic, that's pretty much the point, but Scattergood ties these disparate styles together with her own mercurial songwriting voice, casting herself as a co-dependent lover with harsh mood swings. "My doctor said I've got to sing a happy tune," she quivers with futility on the album opener, "I Hate The Way," which like much of the album, plays like a dispatch from a pill-littered bathroom floor.
Polly Scattergood was released in Scattergood's native U.K. in March; it arrives in America this month on Mute Records, behind a modest push for this characteristically dramatic single, "Other Too Endless."
