1. PJ HarveyDry
This is Polly’s first great song, and a great recording featuring the original three-piece line up of Polly, Rob Ellis and Ian Oliver. When I first met her I could see immediately there was something great there – she already had a really good voice at 17, 18, and there was something about her spirit that came across straight away. I immediately asked her to join my band, although I couldn’t tell at that time what she was going to develop into.
When we first started working together Polly was just starting off as a songwriter. Her first songs, like anybody’s, were quite naïve. In the three years we played together in the Automatic Dlamini band, I watched her writing develop and saw her progress really fast. Between ages 18 and 21 we all change so much, and she was being exposed to a lot of stuff. It was very exciting to watch her go from someone writing quite generic folky stuff to coming up with her own identity and sound, both lyrically and musically. ‘Dress’ was the one that when I first heard it, I thought ‘wow’ – she’s here, she’s arrived.
