Hall turns to me as I enter and says: "I've got a fucking gig!"
"Yeah!" I return.
"In fucking Atlanta!"
"Yeah!"
Hall has a CD ripe for release and a summer tour on the horizon. Look for a CD release concert at 9 p.m. on May 10 in the Campus Center Frontroom, where Polly and a host of her musical peers will perform from "Not a Love Song," Polly's forthcoming album.
There are 13 tracks on "Not a Love Song": 11 Polly originals, one cover and one instrumental piece written by collaborator Mikiya Matsuda '04. The songs all have a heavy folk feel, and it seems that some of her songwriting has yet to shake the training-wheels of influence; hints of Ani Difranco, Frente and the generic idea of an indie rock girl with an acoustic guitar are obvious.
However, at this point in Hall's career, the exploration of particularly new territory isn't the most pressing of artistic issues, and the only real weak point of the CD is this occasional tendency towards the typical.
Hall's strength, which vastly eclipses any stylistic impediments, is the sheer beauty and power of her musical presence, particularly her voice. Hall's instrumental arrangements are great and act as the driving force of some tracks, but it is her vocals that contain the element of brilliance in the music. They elicit a certain realness. The album itself starts out with a vocal showcase, with Polly's rich and meditative cover of Otis Redding's "Dock of the Bay." She next adds a full band and an early '90s kitsch in "Open Road," where the tone floats between half acoustic sweet bird voice and grungy full band chorus.
The album then goes here and there, between those moments when you've heard it all before and those times when you're never heard it quite like that-there's the hard-fought determination and rigid pace of "Keep On," the smooth cascade of multiple vocal tracks in "The Meteor Shower Song," the break-up wit of "Codependent Love Song."
For me, two tracks in particular seem to rise above the rest. The first is "Typewriters," with its simple and powerful construction and impressive lyrical conceit. The song has an air of seamless musical texture, a sense of mature and powerful songwriting, a wonderful subtlety.
The other track is "Mockingbird." In it, the listener gets completely sucked in for two minutes and 48 seconds, encompassed by a meditative bath of song. The finger-picking loop is infectious, and the thick and honey voice drives like a mantra. Once again-a subtle simplicity and musical purity, and the mystery within Hall's voice.
After showing me tour material and prototypes for the CD's art, Hall gets to talking about feelings and album production. She talks about the self-centered nature of the recording process.
"After a point, you can't listen to yourself anymore," she says. "You get sick of all the little imperfections that no one else notices and eventually you surface, a bit dazed and with something you want to share with other people."
But hope persists through trying discouragement. After mentioning her anticipation of receiving quite a large package of CDs in the mailroom sometime soon, Hall's eyes light up a bit and she looks at me with a bit of mischief.
"I made an album. You know when you say something to someone that changes the relationship forever, and you can't go back? I made this. And I can't pretend it doesn't exist," she says.
Before I leave, Hall looks back to the e-mail from Atlanta.
"How's June 6?" the e-mail says.
Hall taps at the screen, erupting in triumphant noise. "June 6 is so good."