SUPERSTAR OF A SHITTY YEAR: HOW MELODY POOL DREAMT HER WAY OUT OF TROUBLE

Trying not to think of the money lost, but the stories to tell about it. Melody Pool - photo by Mat Taylor

ART IMITATES LIFE/LIFE IMITATES ART is meant to be a journalistic cliché, not an actual case study. Unless you’re Melody Pool.

Exactly a year ago, after a long time out of the business (see story link at the end for why), Pool returned to tell us via a new song that she was a fantasy girl. This week, after a break that was not quite as long but still surprising, she releases a new song where she explains to us that she is a dreamer.

Ruefully today, the singer/songwriter working in the liminal zone between folk, rock and country admits the truth of that is in the fact that she lost most of last year, and not coincidentally a substantial whack of money, due to a regrettable business association based on misplaced trust. On dreaming, if you will.

“It was a train wreck,” is what she’ll say for now, and lessons have been learned, but it’s fair to say there is a bigger story to tell – “the plot shittens,” she adds only slightly jokingly - though that may need time, some deep breaths and legal clearances first.

But irrespective of the enshittification of her year of living dangerously slow to get more music out, the fundamentals of Pool – fantasy girl, dreamer et al – remain and this new song, Will Not Let You Down, the third single from what will be her third album, seems to confirm this. How? By making it clear she’s someone immersed in their art more than the mundane aspects of life, such as being a small business owner making hiring decisions.

“The two weeks I spent in the studio [making the next album] are probably the happiest and most creative I have felt in I can’t even tell you how long. I felt so immersed in this creative process and being able to collaborate with musicians and my partner Chris, who is producing,” Pool says, adding with a laugh. “It’s only when I start planning for releases that I start feeling disconnected from the actual creation.”

Will Not Let You Down is a song that opens in quiet, “in the silk of the clover”, and then quickens and thickens, drums and strings pushing out forcefully as Pool insists over and over “I will not let you down”. Who is she trying to convince though, herself? The song never explains, letting us do the thinking, or the feeling. After all, she sings, “nothing can awaken that first does not dream”.

But if the concepts are abstract, this isn’t ethereal, this isn’t delicate folk music, this is earthy and, when the chorus kicks in, meaty and darkening, looking to overwhelm. Pool has said that she told the musicians “don’t be afraid to get weird”, wanting things to be “a little off its hinges”, and they took her – someone who namechecks German experimentalists Can alongside Neil Young as influences – at her word.

“Writing music for me mimics life: it’s dreamy and it’s beautiful and then it’s a fucking nightmare, it’s other-worldly and then it’s really grating,” Pool says. “When I’m writing a song I’m just trying to get out of the way of my muse and listen to what’s happening. If I start thinking that I want it to sound pretty, then it’s not going to work.”

One of the ways Pool got “out of the way of my muse” with this song, was to think less and feel more when it came to the lyrics, as might now be obvious.

“All my songs are so lyric-heavy, and they’ve all been so intricate lyrically too. It was really freeing to write a song that still felt meaningful and didn’t have a lot of filler in the lyrics, but it’s not complicated.”

Not complicated and not specific, and yet emotionally clear.

“It was like watching thoughts flow by and perch in someone’s mind,” she says. “Sometimes I feel like this is what it’s like to be in my head: it’s random you know.”

Okay, not entirely random. Just before we leave, Pool confesses that while she has never seen Jesus Christ Superstar on stage, she has played the original soundtrack album to death. And “I remember listening to Everything’s Alright a lot when I was writing Will Not Let You Down and these songs for the record.”

Well, didn’t see that one coming. On the other hand, as Yvonne Elliman sang back in the day, long before Melody Pool hit her personal and then professional hurdles, “Try not to get worried, try not to turn onto problems that upset you, don’t you know everything’s all right, yes everything’s fine”.

And lord knows that’s not the worst idea after a shitty year.

Will Not Let You Down is released tomorrow, April 16.

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