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I first encountered the legend of Nerina Pallot while perusing the sleeve notes of Kylie Minogue’s eleventh studio effort Aphrodite (2010) just over a decade ago. Anyone who knows me is aware of the more than abiding affection I hold for the Princess of Pop. When I noticed Pallot’s name, alongside her husband Andy Chatterley, as the two tunesmiths that gifted that absolute corker of a title piece to Minogue, I was assuredly intrigued. My curiosity deepened when I noticed that the pair had also penned another favorite of mine from Aphrodite: “Better Than Today.”
Soon enough, I learned that the British—by way of Jersey—vocalist, song scribe and musician was accomplished in her own right with at least three albums (up to that point) under her belt. I promised myself to take the plunge, but somehow Pallot simply lurked on the periphery of my radar for nine years. Finally, I dove headfirst into Pallot’s canon (then numbering six sets) in the summer of 2019 at the insistence of my friend Edgar Casillas.
What happened next? I became obsessed with Pallot’s erudite songwriting, layered pop genre productions and rich, resonant vocal style. By the top of this year, Pallot had risen high in my ranks as one of my favorite recording artists, so when the opportunity to interview her came my way recently, I was more than eager to get it booked.
During our nearly hour-and-a-half long conversation, Pallot reveals an innate love of songcraft, storytelling, the act of creative certitude and how it all ties into her newest offering I Don’t Know What I’m Doing. This is to say nothing of the wisdom she shared during our exchange on daily living—I’m forever grateful to have had this experience.
Congratulations on I Don’t Know What I’m Doing—it’s a remarkable album. Can you talk about where you are as an artist and how that’s reflected in this current project now that it’s out in the world?
Thank you. I really like the idea of adding to my existing body of work. It's been really important to me—since I started out—the idea that I would build something, you know, and that I could progress and get better. And I'm trying to get better with every record I make. I think people will have different responses to the work I make; every time I bring out an album it's like a quiet feeling of accomplishment. Does that make sense?
Yes, absolutely, it does.
And it’s quite satisfying in that I'm learning new things every time I make a record; then, as well as learning new things, I'm taking what I learned on a previous record and bringing that to the process of the following one, you know? That makes the process easier in some ways because, technically, I know a lot more. But then also I've always second-guessed myself and I'm terrible at that.
So, I'm almost in a race or a challenge with myself and that can make the process of recording quite painful. It’s not always an enjoyable experience. There are moments where you are with other musicians and you have a vibe going and those are—emotionally and physically—very enjoyable experiences.
But the vast majority of the time, I'm on my own working on my records, writing them, editing them, just sitting with them. You don't feel accomplished while you're making the work, right? When you are writing, I'm sure when you do a first draft and you're like, what the fuck is this? [laughs] That's what it's like a lot of the time.
I think if you’re creative, it’s always like that—you’re a perfectionist. And I think in terms of when you make art, you are self-conscious because you know what your standard is—so you have to either meet that standard or exceed it. There’s no going beneath the standard—but I think there's always been this amazing throughline in terms of what you do as a writer, musician and vocalist.
Which brings me to my next question, you’ve had your records produced by others and now you primarily produce them on your own, what is that process like for you? How do you plot the sound of an album like I Don’t Know What I’m Doing in particular?
That’s a really good question, I don’t think anyone's asked me that for a while. I don’t think it always starts with the songs, so the only time I've really had a premeditated, concrete vision of a whole record finished in my head was the previous one Stay Lucky (2017), which was very much a mood piece. I just felt like I had to do something really different from The Sound and the Fury (2015). I wanted to take a sort of right turn or left turn or whatever you call it. But with this one (I Don’t Know What I’m Doing), I then had post-Stay Lucky anxiety, if that makes sense?
It does!
I'd so fallen in love with that record. And, for me, I feel like my best song I've ever written is “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter” (from Stay Lucky); so, I kind of lived in the shadow of that song in my own head. I would write things. Then I was like, you know what: ‘You can't make another record that's the same,’ because I listen to so many different things. I guess if I had anything in the back of my head, it was that I wanted to make something that was “3-D,” sculptural landscaping. Like you could almost reach out and touch or feel each song. They would be like little mini-pieces unto themselves, but there would still be this overall arching thing (to the record).
I wrote a lot before, but I didn't like any of it; but “Alice at the Beach” was the first song that felt like I was making something (sonically) 3-D. There was this landscape, there was this story, there was this mood. Then I realized what I was trying to do is a landscape record and to go to these different places with each song.
With “Cold Places,” it’s very much about a place near where I live—the main river in England, the Thames—it was an absolute bitch of a song to record. That one took me six months alone to do. I moved out of London in 2018 and so, where I’m sitting right now, all I see are trees, it’s very pastoral. I wanted that to be reflected in the album, but I also didn’t want it to be too sonically premeditated. I wanted each song to have its own world.
I love “Cold Places,” it’s one of my favorites from the new album. With an immersive piece like that, can you take me through what it’s like to create it individually, then take it to people you admire and respect as musicians to physically render them?
Yeah! It’s exciting and terrifying because I work with really high-quality musicians. The guys I work with are playing on some great records. So, Alex (Bonfanti) who plays bass on my records, he’s working at a really high level on a lot of the British soul records that I really admire that are coming out now. He’s an immense player. When I was writing and thinking about the production, I'm always thinking about how I can get the best out of these amazing musicians—but at the same time—thinking these songs can’t suck because they'll just stop playing with me. [laughs]
That’s why I write with them in mind. There are all these different layers, but there’s also the excitement that when you start playing the songs, the shape happens and everybody's really enjoying it. Like on “Master Builder,” it’s all about Alex's bass. I remember calling him a few days before—it was one of the last songs we did on the record—and I said, “I’ve written something, I started putting it together and I was thinking there’s many ways of approaching it, but I keep feeling like we could go the Stevie Wonder vibe with it.” He was like, “I'm all over that! That is my favorite era of music!”
I really cross every t and dot every i of the song before I walk in the studio to play it to those guys, because they’re my peers, but I’ve also got this thing where I never want to be the only musician in the room. Otherwise, what's the point? Do you know what I mean? Because I play everything, if I have to—like on the Year of the EPs (2014)—I ended up playing drums on some of those tracks, so I know I can cover every base, but I'm only ever gonna pick musicians who are better than me. That gives me confidence as a writer, if the band are feeling it and they wouldn't bullshit me and that’s how I get a really great record together. We don't get to the studio with a sketch, we go in and I have got the song done, finished. I know where every part goes and I have a vague sort of sonic production in my head. I’m not there suddenly writing a middle eight in the studio that doesn’t happen.
It’s like you’ve got that deep kind of fellowship with your musicians and that’s come across in the music—I love that about your work. The production and sound of it never feels closed or insular. Again, coming back to “Cold Places,” for me, it captures that fresh, open feel in your sound—especially with the harp intro. How do you achieve that?
With the opening of “Cold Places,” I didn't intend it to have that massive opening of harp, but Camilla Pay, who’s playing harp on it—she played (the harp) on “All Bets Are Off” on my Year of the Wolf (2011) album…
Oh my God! I’m sorry, but that is one of my all-time favorite songs of yours because of the harp at the end! [laughs]
Imagine hearing it in the studio! She was playing it and we were all like, whoa; she comes in and she’s exactly as you imagine a harp player to look: she’s this wonderful, willowy, English woman. And she comes in with this incredible instrument and she said, “Is it okay if I warm up to the song? Like, let me just play around.” I've got a habit now that I’ve always recorded the mucking around because then you can get amazing stuff and I just said, “Sure, just warm up,” and then she started playing so I just pressed record.
I’d already had it in the back of my head, I’d kind of written a harp part (for “All Bets Are Off”). And she liked the sort of sketch I’d laid out because I'd already sort of orchestrated the flutes to go in that place. But then she obviously took that and did this beautiful improvisation. So I was like, all right, well, we’ll just cut those two things together. With the magic of a bit of reverb and some fairy dust, it feels like the whole thing starts like that. I never understand how people have these amazing people on their records or they get musicians in and you never hear the identity of the musician. Like what is the point of having humans on your record if you don't let them be themselves and play to their strengths.
We’re finding a pocket on these records that we are really comfortable playing in when we get in the studio, it’s kind of like breathing. It’s not hard, but I let them be themselves. You know, I'm not asking them to play like somebody else. I think that might be the key to that openness that you describe, it’s a sort of spirit of generosity between all of us.
Your connection to your colleagues reminds me of an interview I did with Katie Melua for her project Album No. 8 (2020); she had a similar position to you in regard to the relationship she has with her musician colleagues she worked with for that record. She really emphasized bringing their personalities into the framework of her music, like you do—so again, it all comes down to that creative fellowship, a true exchange of energy that comes across in your sound.
Shifting gears to your songwriting approach, do you consider yourself to be a traditional storyteller or an observational songwriter, or both?
I think I'm both—and I think I started off observational, as a writer, and now I like telling stories more and more. And I think you can hear that (observational voice) on Dear Frustrated Superstar (2001), which is why sometimes I sort of wince a bit, it was a bit too self-obsessed. It’s fine to do that, but who are you doing that for? Because unless you make it accessible, you might as well just write it in a journal and be done with it because the whole point of this is to connect so that the listener hears something instinctively and understands.
Even if they haven't had the exact same situation, they know what those broader feelings are. Like “Geek Love” (from Fires), for example, was about a very specific situation. There was an ex-wife, there was a cat, there were all these things, I was living in L.A. at the time. But everybody understands it’s about that thing of when you’re in relationships, it’s a mismatch of communication and you feel like you are playing someone off one another, when actually it’s just miscommunication. And that’s why we need sex, because with sex you don’t need to talk. That physicality often fixes communication problems. I was learning that (songwriting) process (then), which is how to be specific, but also be universal at the same time. That’s probably been one of my biggest learning curves.
Can you take me through how I Don’t Know What I’m Doing feels to you as a vocalist? How are you sitting with your voice on this effort? I think you have such a beautiful tone.
Singing-wise, I guess I never thought of myself as a singer—I was a songwriter. I mean, it's so bizarre to me that I get on stage for a living because if you met me as a child, I was shy; I found a lot of solace in (playing) piano. It was this place I could go and people would leave me alone if I was at the piano, you know?
And then I started to put melodies together and then I was writing songs and I thought, “Well, I had better sing them,” but I never felt confident as a singer. Because my mom listened to mostly soul and country, two very different things, so we had a lot of the big singers on heavy rotation at home. I knew I couldn't sing like Chaka Khan or Whitney Houston.
I just didn't have that voice no matter how much I tried to sing like that, I was always feeling embarrassed about my voice, I guess. It took a long time to own my voice. I don't really think I owned my voice until Stay Lucky. You know, I always feel like it’s not big enough or it’s not this enough. Then, one day, I was in a store and something was on the store radio; I was like, ‘This is great! What is this?’ And I realized it was me! I was literally buying something really boring, like milk or yogurt…
Oh my gosh, how amazing is that!
Yeah, it was me doing the Drake cover (“Hold On, We’re Going Home”) that I had forgotten I’d done. And now it’s in one of the supermarkets here, (they) play it all the time. But I was like, ‘Shit, it’s me. This is cool,’ and I think I just relaxed into my voice.
It’s like you have found what works for you in that space as a vocalist; I’m likely biased, but I think you're a fantastic singer. To my ear, you know how to deliver exactly what your songs require. For example, “Put Your Hands Up” from Year of the Wolf is a very fun, sexy vocal approach you take there, but then you can turn around and serve up something like “The Road'” from The Sound and the Fury that is totally opposite—which almost has like a cold, menacing tone to it that pairs up to the electronic, Middle Eastern vibe of the track.
Speaking of tracks, you have always pushed at the border of your sound with every album that you’ve cut. How do you capture so many influences like R&B, jazz, electro, and pop?
Well, with The Sound and the Fury, I was trying to get the sound of where I was living and also that record—it’s interesting that you say that the vocal is menacing (on “The Road”). What started that whole album was that there was a horrific murder of a guy walking down on a street, two streets down from where I was born in London; he got decapitated. Where I was born is not a great part of town, but it’s where—when my mom came from India in the 1960s—it was where a lot of her family came. It’s very multicultural, but it was also, before they arrived, it was a very white area; there was always this constant culture clash.
And also, around the time of that murder, Margaret Thatcher had died and people were burning effigies. And I don’t know whether I saw the future or whatever, it felt like this powder keg was waiting to be lit. And so that powder keg got lit and it was almost like I jumped forward to a premonition of what would happen with Brexit—and I know we are both living in countries that are so divided and it’s so painful to watch. But I was trying to make a record that sounded like the sound of the streets I was living on in London at the time, which is a really multicultural part of town.
So that album was almost like the sound of leaving my voice memo on the bus and you listening to my daily journey, if that makes sense? I'm really pleased that you got that in the music. So that's why that vocal on “The Road” is menacing. I felt like I had to be the warning voice, you know? This is the shit that’s happening right now.
Your records and how you put them across in performance, vocally, they always hold up. They’re always timely to my ear and many others too. Again, I think you’re a great singer who knows how to deliver what a song asks for.
I think it’s fun to play dress up with your voice. You know, we all code switch don’t we? With our speaking voices. I feel like I have to bring my grown-up voice when I don’t feel like a grown-up, but that code switching, I think you can do that as a vocalist as well without losing integrity. It’s just bringing a different aspect of your personality to each thing.
Let’s talk about “Chanson” from the new album—I’m obsessed. It’s a beautiful piece, but you’ve restricted it to the physical versions of I Don’t Know What I’m Doing. Intentional choice?
Thank you! I kind of wanted the physical versions to have this special thing for people who bought it; I'm happy about that because I just think if someone goes to the trouble of getting a physical copy of my record, they should be rewarded with something beautiful.
You’ve got this really expansive body of work that stretches out to various covers, EPs and the like—are there any outtakes from I Don’t Know What I’m Doing that may surface later as a digital or physical extended play?
Possibly! You’ll have to wait and see. [laughs]
You’re also known as a stellar live musician. With the world slowly coming out of our COVID-19 cocoons, how do you see bringing your new collection to life on the stage?
I've got some shows coming in the autumn and then the bigger venues where there’s space. I'm gonna try and expand the band so that we can at the very least add backing vocalists to the set-up and if not, strings as well, so that you get a really live experience of the record.
That sounds exciting! I know that this material is going to hit hard, in a good way, when you bring it to the stage. Pivoting for a moment, it feels like you’ve put your finger on the pulse of what everyone is feeling right now—that space between external and internal crises while trying to remain hopeful? An accurate summation?
I was only making the most honest record I could in terms of writing about what I was feeling and what I was seeing. But also wanting to—and this sounds so corny—but I wanted it to be like a gift to everybody so that when they heard it, they’d be like everything we’d gone through, hadn’t been forgotten. That there was a collective understanding and also a hopefulness in it. And so far, people have responded saying that they feel that.
I never like to write in a silo. Even though I don’t live in the city anymore, I’m in the city a lot. I like walking. I like hearing people’s voices. I like meeting people. I like feeling like I am part of a community, a society…because as a writer, if you take yourself away from that too much, then how can you understand what people are feeling? As a writer, I mean, do you write in your own quiet space or can you write in a cafe and things like that? I’m sure Atlanta has its own vibe, right?
It depends. I’m someone who always prefers to have a space that's comfortable for me, but I've also had to write in areas outside of my comfort zone out of necessity too. Like, I’ve needed to write at work on my lunch hour or in a car. I'll make it happen anywhere, but I have preferences for places I like to write, but I agree with you, if you don’t let the outside influence you, then how can you connect to that outside energy?
I would be really horrified if someone said to me, “you know, the thing about this record that I love is that it doesn’t remind me of anything in the world right now,” it would be like I failed.
I get that.
I find life easier as I get older. I’ve figured out the coping mechanisms thing, you know, I’ve been fortunate in that I’ve been mentally strong enough to figure out things, but I'm acutely aware that life is really tricky to navigate for people—even without a pandemic or political instability. Music brings solace, it brings peace, it brings joy and all these things, but it’s a place to put our feelings. We’ve all had a lot of big feelings for two years and I want people to be able to park them in this record.
I think you’ve created something that does just that. So, I’ve got a little lightning round bit where I’m going to name an album of yours and you just give me whatever impression first comes to mind. Okay, Dear Frustrated Superstar.
Oh, so sweet. Keep going kid! [laughs]
Fires (2005)
Mama’s desperate to finally hit paydirt.
That’s hilarious! [laughs] The Graduate (2009).
She got what she wished for and then she wasn’t so sure about it.
Year of the Wolf
I’m pregnant but haven’t told my record company and I need to make a record as fast as I can.
The Sound and the Fury
Things are going down.
Stay Lucky
The world is breaking my heart and I want to feel better.
I Don’t Know What I’m Doing
I don’t know what I’m doing. [laughs]
Oh my God, that’s perfect! [laughs]
Okay, this final question is always the hardest: what are your five favorite albums of all time?
All right. So, the first record that I've probably played the most over and over is Carole King’s Tapestry (1971). Every songwriter says that because it’s like the Bible, it's a great album. She was crucial in making me feel like I could take my funny voice that was obsessed with soul records and make it make sense, because she didn’t have a “soul voice.” She showed me that you can still have these elements you love and sing in your own true voice and people are going to be moved by it because you’re being you.
Kate Bush, The Sensual World (1989), it’s a dream record. The title track is based on the very last page or so of Ulysses by James Joyce and I just remember thinking this is insane. I couldn’t have made “Cold Places” without The Sensual World.
I gave you two favorite records. It’s important to be honest with the records that you listen to; which ones you put on over and over again, rather than the records that you think you ought to love the most. I guess the next record that I’ve played over and over again, next to those two, is Jill Scott’s Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1 (2000). Jill talks about the beginning of a relationship, that excitement, when you first meet someone on a date, you can't get the stuff out quick enough. I want to get to know this person as much as I can. And I don’t think there's only that type of excitement on that record either, it’s also full of shit boyfriends and there’s the spoken word aspect of it and her voice. I mean, her voice is just one of my favorite voices in the world. She’s a great singer, she’s just wonderful live.
Okay, Massive Attack’s Blue Lines (1991). That’s a very good one. It was almost like a signpost, in terms of production. When I heard strings plus beats, I was like, ‘Oh shit, we can do that! That’s a possibility!’ It really hit my kind of classical sensibilities with the modern (ones). It was like postmodern before postmodern, It’s still very fresh.
Lastly, I think I’m going to go with Tumbleweed Connection (1970) by Elton John.
Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited from the original transcript for length and clarity.
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