Having been described as ‘PJ Harvey’s little sister’ (despite being, like, years older), the comparison is not inaccurate, if you only take the backwoods, grizzled-blues-momma aspect of Polly’s work and neglect the gazillion other facets. For a more apt comparison of ‘East Overshoe’ (even if I do say so myself) would be ‘Trout Mask Replica’ (ie. hard work) with faux-Southern Gothic lyrics and vocals by Cyndi Lauper doing a hoarse-throated impression of performance-art shriek-queen Diamanda Galas (ie. bloody hard work).
If you can get past Sandy’s love-it-or-loathe-it voice, you’ll be rewarded with sufficiently gritty slide guitar(although when has that ever made an album?), and ‘Second Dad’ is catchy in a redneck bar-room band from Hell kind of way. But it’s all much of a muchness, lapsing into tuneless, grating sludge towards the end; proving that a poor facsimile/pisstake of dem old swamp blues is no match for the real thang. Put it this way – Sandy Dillon’s artistic scope is admirable and makes a refreshing change from the Hear’says and Limp Bizkits of this world; but that admiration is unlikely to become love. Disappointing.
