Electro-pop band POLSKY have been on the Loverboy radar for some time and we’ve been eagerly awaiting their debut album. We need wait no more.  Subtitled ‘A Manifesto For Modern Life’, POLSKY’s My Own Company is ‘a musical corporate identity for the modern day’. And one of the best albums we’ve heard in a long time. Intelligent, sexy, dirty-romantic, fun: of course we love it. Fallon Gold took a meeting with CEO Chris Warren (vocals and guitar), Senior Synth Architect Ben Warn (keyboards), Rhythm Logistics Engineer Alex Robertson (drums) and Low Frequency Systems Analyst Chris Norman (bass). Here are the minutes.

Your music is an epic dreamscape blanket for the ears. What was your concept behind My Own Company?
CW: The album began in a fit of inspiration after the financial crash of 2008. You could feel the atmosphere shift back then. London has been a rush of gentrification and a clawing of tired ideas, repeating old phrases and habits, both culturally and artistically. I guess we lost the shock of the new. The last time that happened was punk in the late 70’s. My Own Company is an attempt to describe the difference in experience between then and now.

AR: We started working on the corporate idealism for the visual aspect of the album which has been seeping into the modern psyche more and more – especially over the past few years. The line between business, art and culture is blurring so we wanted to satirise that in how we portrayed the band. We are the untouchable POLSKY board of Directors.

If we were to take POLSKY out, what would guarantee Loverboy a second date?
CN – We prefer not to mix business with pleasure. That said, we’d love to touch base with Loverboy at a networking event over canapés, or perhaps some corporate team building. Let’s build a raft together and cross a river. Then back to ours for pie charts and profit projections.

Ben – we hear you love Judy. We love Judy. If she were alive today, what contemporary tunes would you love her to cover? What POLSKY track would be your dream to hear from her belting throat?
BW: I love Judy. I do a piano arrangement that she did of ‘I Got Rhythm’ that I play on various honky-tonk pianos all around London. I remember playing this at St. Pancras Station whilst waiting for a Eurostar train to take my other half to Paris. Funnily enough, I toured with Judy’s daughter, the wonderful Lorna Luft, a few years back –“Stick a fork in me, honey. I’m done”, she’d say to me after a long day.

As for a contemporary song, I’d love to hear a Judy version of ‘Single Ladies’. She was married 4 or 5 times so I think it’d be pretty appropriate. I can imagine her doing a version of ‘Rounds’ from our new album and we would both have a large gin & tonic together.

Ah yes – “I drink to remember and I drink to forget/I can’t remember all the people I’ve met”. Sounds like our Judes. Most of the tracks on the album feel very filmic. Do you have little movies in mind when you’re writing and recording them?
CW: It’s hard not to! We like the thought of a song as a container for a little world. I certainly hope that this offers the escapism of a film – a chance to dream and escape to another dimension.

There’s echoes of 80s electro pop and postpunk in there too. Some of the best music at the moment is steeped in an 80s vibe. What is it about this era that is ripe for the musical picking?
CW: I was listening to Now 82 recently and it was amazing to hear that every track had a different production style. There seemed to be this rush of creativity after punk that paved the way for so much – for better or for worse. I guess these records hold a little melancholy as a nod to that period. There is more that is possible but maybe we’ve reached a zenith in terms of cultural absorption and acceptance of the new and challenging in pop music. This was always in mind when I was writing My Own Company; there’s a childlike hope that something can still shift.

You had a single entitled ‘George Lazenby Banana Plant Bossanova’. ‘Love At The Cinema’ is also kind of bossa. From this – and the rest of your oeuvre – I picture the POLSKY natural habitat to be a slice of dirty exotica tikicore decadence that has fallen into a portal playing host to the darkest parts of the minds of Lynch, Badalamenti and David Byrne. Am I far off?
CN: Now that is a description. Love it.

AR: Strong use of the word “oeuvre” as well. You don’t hear it enough.

CT: Stick around with me, honey; I use it all the time. I probably overuse it. 

CN: ‘Cinema’ was actually about E.T. and Chris’ (Warren) first date at the age of five. It’s a lament to Hollywood and the updating of the blockbuster to a new emotion.

CW: We always hold David Lynch in mind as we all grew up with Twin Peaks! We inherit that kind of 50’s cinema escape feeling that’s in ‘Love At The Cinema’ and in ‘Nimbus Cumulus’.

AR: I can’t think of a single band that doesn’t hold David Byrne as one their top influences so yeah, pretty spot on.

You have a bloody musical saw on ‘Nimbus Cumulus’. (I love you) Did you know that (amongst many other instruments) Marlene Dietrich played the musical saw?
AR: We do yeah, that’s my sister, Kate Shields. She has been playing the saw for years on the Brighton cabaret and burlesque circuit. I did know that Marlene Dietrich played the saw, yes. Excellent cabaret trivia knowledge there.

CT: I’m a font of useless Hollywood trivia, darling. You’ve no idea…

CW: It’s an amazing instrument to hear live and recording it is very odd – the sound seems to emanate from everywhere. It almost doesn’t matter where you put the microphone!

What kind of produtky can we expect from POLSKY next?
CN: The album, which has had its online release, is our main focus right now. We hope to follow this with a vinyl and CD release, along with a second single from the album. Beyond that, the possibilities are endless – although I’m hoping for some branded POLSKY pens and keyrings. People love those.

CT: Mousemats too. Mousemats will never go out of fashion.

CW: Expect fragmentation and stock liquidation leading to a brand new feeling about a feeling located somewhere in time. And a tour in early 2017.

What’s your favourite Mariah Carey songs?
BW: ‘All I’ve ever wanted’, makes me cry every time.

CN: All of her Christmas Album (especially ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’). Sorry Cliff – it’s Mariah all the way for me.

AR: I prefer her early blues material.

 POLSKY My Own Company is available for download from Bandcamp. Catch them at 93 Feet East, London on 8^th July and The Wave Maiden, Southsea on 9^th July.

Images of POLSKY: Joe Armitage, BoneShaker Photography