Isolation (Tonight) will be available on all streaming platforms from Thursday 19th November 2020
‘Polash From The Garden’ is the forthcoming solo EP from The Offtopics songwriter & frontman and former Grenadines guitarist Polash Larsen. The EP is an introspective, reflective and occasionally whimsical offering from an artist more known for his on-stage antics and high energy performance persona.
Recording during the lockdown created unexpected opportunities to explore songs that couldn’t find their place in a band context. “It would have been easy to become negative, focusing on what we couldn’t do but we (Polash and sound designer and Tim Minchin engineer Darius Kedros) chose to lean into the limitations. If I couldn’t play it on guitar myself then we couldn’t bring someone else into the room to do it. There was no hiring fancy equipment. One of the tracks features a drum that Darius found in hard rubbish! I still try to focus on story when I write a song and the stripped back production puts the events and characters front and centre.”
A case in point is the single ‘Isolation (Tonight)’ which, in a subtle nod to the EP tittle, starts with a circular chord cycle similar to Van Morrison’s ‘In The Garden’ but then deviates into unexpected territory by contrasting languid vocal delivery with the underlying impatience of the rhythm guitar. “I wrote this song very early on in the pandemic thinking about people physically separated from their loved ones. It’s an anticipatory sort of song from the perspective of someone who’s trying to make the best out a date night over Zoom. It’s a song of frustrated romance.”
The EP makes a virtue of “making do” and is inspired by the acoustic bootlegs of Bobby Womack and Rick Rubin’s American Recordings with Johnny Cash. The EP title is a play on words referring to both the recording taking place at Kedros’ Garden Studio and the Bengali-Australian Polash being named for the flower from the Flame of The Forest tree. Illustrator Rebecca Stewart’s cover art was inspired by a New Delhi mobile Covid testing station depicting the artist as “the sort of Hindu god who keeps an arm free to pat dogs”.
http://www.theofftopics.com | management@theofftpics.com
The Offtopics 