Following the release of her critically acclaimed third album White Dots (Sib Records, 2019) – hailed as “exquisite,” “glorious” and “addictive” by MOJO **** – and ahead of her planned fourth, the Dublin-born, Norfolk-based artist-producer, author, and academic Paula Wolfe is re-releasing her back-catalogue – and proving to be as fresh and relevant as ever.
The re-release of Wolfe’s back catalogue – consisting of debut EP Find (2000), debut album Staring (2003) and the highly-acclaimed second album Lemon (2008) – proved more convoluted than expected. Wolfe, one of the first generation of pioneering female artists who embraced the arrival of digital recording software in the 1990s, couldn’t locate the original files for her debut EP (Find) or album (Staring). Attempts to remaster from the CDs were unsuccessful, so she decided to re-record all the songs, which morphed into a complete re-working of both, with Wolfe publishing a paper about the very creative and technical processes that have come to define her work as a self-producing singer-songwriter. Somewhat ironically, the title track of the EP Find is actually about songwriting itself – or rather – the pull at the end of the summer to return ‘home’ to the craft.
Though harking from a different era and using completely different processes, the re-working of the early releases feels very ‘now’ given the much-lauded re-working of Taylor Swift’s back catalogue. As does the subject matter on Wolfe’s first two albums, with many of the songs being stories based on her time living in Manchester in the 1990s, an era of hardship for many with the album’s characters often finding themselves on the edges, living out their marginalisation. They also speak of her own troubled loves from that time, more so on her second album Lemon, an album that saw Uncut hail Wolfe as a “tender and idealistic singer-songwriter” and the album “a quiet gem.” Thus, the beauty of Wolfe’s work is in combining storytelling with the confessional. What is striking is that these songs, based on events, from a particular time in a particular place, feel compellingly relevant today.
Take the title track of the debut album, ‘Staring’ is a biting critique of the entitled sharp-elbows of the privileged, ensuring what Wolfe describes as ‘a narrow-eyed determined stride past those who might be better than you.’ In contrast, her depiction of the everyday lives of young people, on the other side of the track, details living out the tedium of underprivilege and poverty, drawing on her experiences from her then-day job of teaching English in some of the most deprived areas of the North-West.
‘Joy’ sees a disaffected joyrider trying to goad his friend into joining him on a spree, ‘what d’you mean you want something better; this is it for lads like you and me’. ‘Skinny’ presents a pale young girl ‘hanging round on the corner’, bored with her gossiping friends, living an inward life, avoiding the scary local gang and being hungry. ‘Leanne’ charts the challenges of a school day for a troubled little girl who ‘hides her head in her jumper when she’s sad’ and Oldham Street witnesses the streets of late 1990s Manchester, turn dark and wild at chucking out time.
As dark as some of these stories are, Wolfe’s production, on the other hand is upbeat with the songs benefiting from her new string, brass and woodwind arrangements performed by a small team of local session players she recorded in her house, while she provides all the guitars, the bass (which she taught herself to play as part of the project), the synths and beats and, of course, her signature vocals.
Having garnered widespread acclaim throughout her career for “hitting the mark on both sides of the desk” (FATEA Magazine), this project sees Wolfe’s skills as composer, arranger, producer and mix engineer, in addition to those as a songwriter, musician and singer, ever evolving as a self-producing artist, demonstrating that the plaudits remain as well deserved as ever.
It’s worth noting that following those early recordings, Wolfe has also developed a significant side hustle as a leading academic with an international profile in music production and gender. Her award nominated book Women in the Studio (Routledge 2020), was published alongside the release of the third album and, since its publication, has become embedded in the curriculum in degree programmes worldwide, supported by guest lectures and talks from Paula at over 40 universities within the UK, Europe, Canada and the US.
This reworking project, therefore, has seen Wolfe developing a new area of practice research with her latest publication forming the blueprint of her new book on self-production, a practice, that she has long argued is an art form, distinct within music production, and which continues to offer creative empowerment for those artists marginalised by their gender, their colour and their class.
A singular artist and academic, Paula Wolfe continues to forge her own path, shaping the discourse that follows.