The last time I saw Polly Paulusma, she was playing a packed out Lock 17, sporting full band and string quartet. Riding high on good reviews for her debut album 'Scissors In My Pocket' and after a summer of festivals, she was about to embark on her first tour of America, and would land support slots with Jamie Cullum, Divine Comedy and Joseph Arthur. Eighteen months on, it's an unbelievable treat to see her back, playing solo in the kind of small, cold, candle-lit acoustic club that she started out in. It's a conspicuously low-profile gig, showcasing all new material, but there is standing room only at the back and you get the sense that quite a few people have been turned away.

The basement of the Slaughtered Lamb has an understated cool, far removed from the clatter of the city clientele rattling their jewellery upstairs. Down below it's a black brick-walled affair with an eclectic assortment of bohemian seating (when was the last time you saw a chaise longue at a gig?) It reminds me of the River Bar on Tower Bridge before they tarted it up and took its soul. The setting suits the sophisticated and intimate nature of Paulusma's poetic and often dark songs. Weaving smart rhymes like 'bathroom / half-gloom' and 'extinguish / unencumbered English' against complex-but-not-in-the-least-bit-jazzy chord progressions is evidently (still) what Polly does well. Her secret weapon though has to be her exquisitely English singing voice, which when pushed is on the verge of '60s singer Melanie; and when soft, is as sultry as Suzanne Vega.

But back to basements and gloom... This is Paulusma's first gig in six months and she has pre-warned us that her second album - which has already been some time in the making - will have a darker, louder edge. Although there is (deep breath) an electric guitar on stage, I'm glad to discover that the new material does not reveal any Cradle of Filth or similar influences. And aside from the gloriously discordant moments in a song about killing babies, which features the aforementioned electric axe, there is seemingly little change in her style. That is not to say that there is no evidence of evolution, because Paulusma is the kind of songwriter that will challenge herself as a matter of course. Anyone who brings out three guitars and a piano to play a solo half-hour set is someone who has constant development on their mind. Likewise the subject matter veers far and wide from identity, love and quarter-life crises; to being invisible, hide-and-seek and yes, you did read it right the first time, killing babies.

It's nice to see the rawness of an artist grappling with new, freshly arranged songs, especially as none of these are basic three-chord wonders. One of the songs has been in Polly's live set for a while, but in the others you can just catch the concentration of a performer whose music so often seems effortless. These have a vitality to them that will inevitably be diminished after another two years of hard touring gets its hands on them. You can tell that this crowd, myself included, feel lucky to be here at their inception.

Rich Barnard
rich@richbarnard.com
www.richbarnard.com

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Polly Paulusma - Electro Acoustic Club at the Slaughtered Lamb 26/01/06 Rich Barnard & Virtually Acoustic
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