WHEN Emma Pollock thought about which producer to use on her third solo album, she was quick to plump for Paul Savage.
Savage is, after all, her husband. And as well as having the helm at the Chem19 studios in Blantyre in South Lanarkshire, Savage and Pollock were both members of the brilliant Mercury-nominated Scottish indie act The Delgados for a decade until the band split in 2005.
“It is a testing thing for a married couple, but then I couldn’t see myself working with anyone else,” says Pollock of making In Search of Harperfield, her best solo album to date and well worth the five-year wait since The Law of Large Numbers.
Franz Ferdinand, Deacon Blue and Calvin Harris are among the names to have recorded at Chem19, while Pollock’s album is released on the Chemikal Underground label she co-founded in 1995.
Before getting on to the new album, I ask if there’s been any talk of the Delgados reforming.
“It’s a difficult one. It’s not easy for people to jump back into something like that when their lives have altered so significantly; we’re not afforded the freedom that we once were.
“We’ve all gone off and done our own things. I’ve got my own solo thing, Paul has the studio, Alun [Woodward] is working with Chemikal Underground as well as booking shows for a venue, Stewart [Henderson] is also involved with Chemikal Underground and events and projects.
“So while we still work together closely, we have a lot of obligations and so it would be difficult for us to consider [a reunion] – and I’m not even sure we’d want to. It would have to happen only because we decided that we wanted to play music together again.”
The Delgados put out five albums in their decade together and Pollock says she’s proud of “each and every one of them”.
“I think they demonstrate a true development, from the scratchy and frantic sound of Domestiques onwards.”
It was their 2000 classic The Great Eastern that got Mercury-nominated. Pollock’s new album deserves all manner of plaudits too. It’s full of melodic indie-pop and folk, replete with strings and also a remarkable classic pop sensibility that harks back to Scott Walker and Dusty Springfield (with the closing track Old Ghosts particularly Springfield-esque).
“Old Ghosts is my favourite song on the album. It’s such good fun to play live. We always have to catch our breath after playing that,” Pollock says.
She is in the midst of a run of tour dates and says she’d like to get an Irish gig or two booked in before the year is out. There’s a very real connection to Ireland on the album, as the first track Cannot Keep a Secret was inspired by her mother’s Irish origins and a heartbreaking tale that Pollock now admits is “horrendously common”.
“My mum and gran passed away on the same day last year, so it was very intense. And neither of them knew that the other was ill, because they had been estranged for 10 years.
“Cannot Keep a Secret is a reference to the fact that my mum was adopted. My gran had fallen pregnant out of wedlock in Buncrana in Donegal in 1937 and had been sent to Glasgow and had the baby there.
“The whole thing was very traumatic for her and I think she was told that she couldn’t keep the baby, so my mum was taken home by a cleaner who worked in the hospital and was raised in north Glasgow.
“She wanted to go back to Buncrana but didn’t have a great connection with the family there. I actually went back last year to scatter my gran’s ashes.”
Pollock is rightfully angry about the forced adoption that was so common in Ireland at the time and says both her mum and gran’s lives were “blighted” by what happened to them. She has discovered that she has three aunts in their 60s that she never knew about, because of “the family shame”.
The album is named after Harperfield, the first house Pollock’s parents bought.
“It’s in Lanarkshire and it’s beautiful. I never lived in it, because my parents lived there before I was born, but I decided to drive past it for the first time a few months after my mum passed away. It was lovely, very idyllic.”
And the picture of the sleeve features her dad.
“That’s him on the left, working the land in Blair Atholl. The graphic designer made it look a bit more surreal, so now it looks more like a moon landing,” she laughs.
While her dad was a jazz musician, Pollock clearly took her ear for pop from her mum, who she recalls once told her that Eternal Flame by The Bangles was going to be a number one hit the very first time she heard it.
In Search of Harperfield is filled with superb tunes, among them Alabaster, Parks and Recreation, Vacant Stare and Dark Skies. Pollock marked the album release in January with a launch gig at the Oran Mor in Glasgow; she says she is still “gobsmacked” at how amazing Glasgow is in terms of is music scene and the opportunities it offers artists.
“I’ve been here for over 20 years and it is brilliant; it keeps getting better. It came out of the hellish spell in the 70s and 80s, with the unemployment and loss of industry, much of it down to Thatcher. I moved here in 1989 and things were changing.
“They had the Glasgow Garden Festival and then in 1990 it was the City of Culture. So from the 80s onwards, the music that’s come out of Glasgow has been non-stop and it’s been extraordinary. We have so many great music shops, venues, rehearsal spaces and recording studios. It’s flourishing.”
In Search of Harperfield is out now on Chemikal Underground. For tour updates, see emmapollock.com.
