Back in the hazy crazy daze of 2004, Karine Polwart took a momentous - and to most outsiders - ludicrous decision. Long adored as one of Scotland's finest interpreters of traditional song with a blossoming career in a variety of outlets - notably Malinky, Battlefield Band and MacAlias - her dabbles in songwriting appeared to most an intriguing sideline to the main event.
Karine, though, didn't get where she is today by following her head rather than her heart. She left MacAlias and Battlefield, served notice on Malinky, took a deep breath and announced she was forming her own band and would concentrate in the foreseeable future entirely on her own original material. As gambles go, the odds looked steeply stacked against her and the smart money was on a swift return to her old job in social work... though those who'd kept a close eye on the original songs she'd contributed to MacAlias might have thought differently.
"It was just something I felt I needed to do," she laughs. "I hadn't done many solo gigs and I didn't have gallons of self-confidence, but in any band situation you have to make compromises and I wanted to be able to go out and sing whatever I wanted. If you gamble and really go for it the worst thing that can happen is you have to give up and try something else."
History now shows Karine's bold decision to put her faith in her own songs and go her own way was an inspired one. That first solo album Faultlines tottered under the weight of the awards heaped on it at the following year's BBC Folk Awards - including the coveted gong for best new song for her compassionate tale of death and alcohol, The Sun's Comin' Over The Hill ("no, it's not autobiographical") - and the Polwart band became bankers to make all that summer's festivals go with a zing. The album's successor Scribbled In Chalk enjoyed similar success and acclaim - including another BBC Folk Award for best song of the year, for the cute Daisy - and apart from gaining the freedom to create the music she wanted, she built her own idyllic self-contained infra-structure to support it. With Shetlander Inge Thomson on accordion and her brother Steven on guitar, she made it even more of a family affair by marrying her Cape Breton-born drummer Mattie Foulds. Last year she became pregnant and everyone assumed the Polwart bandwagon would grind to a halt while Karine put her feet up to prepare for motherhood. They underestimated the resilient Ms Polwart. Far from taking time out, she immediately set about recording not one, but two new albums.
"It was," she says somewhat ruefully now, "the height of foolishness. Making two albums while you're pregnant... I didn't really think it through. I'd watched Kathryn Williams and Thea Gilmore go through the same thing and they seemed very organised and made it all seem smooth, though it probably wasn't!"
The original intention was to make one album before the baby was born. Having fought so hard to establish her credentials as a songwriter, Karine now felt confident enough in her own solo identity to again embrace traditional song and the grand plan was to record an album that mixed her own contemporary songs with trad material. But when it came to the crunch she found new songs were pouring out of her and piling into a box already brimming with traditional songs she was desperate to record and the only sensible option seemed to be to turn them into two completely separate albums. So now not only is she the adoring mother of a nine-month old son Arlo, she's also the proud parent of two brand spanking new albums - Fairest Flooer (the trad one) and This Earthly Spell (the contemporary one).
"They're very different, but I'm really happy with both of them," she says, seemingly amazing herself. "Last year was very full-on and I did overstretch myself, but I'm pleased with the results."
She was in the studio recording Fairest Flooer a week before Arlo was born and, not surprisingly, found herself "knackered" and breathless. "Being pregnant did change my voice," she says. "I felt I had to sing out more, it forced me to make more of an effort and I think it sounds a little more ballsy as a result.
"Being pregnant did change my voice," she says. "I felt I had to sing out more, it forced me to make more of an effort and I think it sounds a little more ballsy as a result.
And I enjoyed it. Singing makes you feel good anyway and it's specially good when you're pregnant"
Surprisingly in the circumstances, Fairest Floo’er is a very dark album in the grand manner of the folk tradition of ballads about death and broken hearts, accentuated by boldly sparse arrangements. Brother Steven on guitar and banjo and Kim Edgar on piano are the only other supporting musicians as Karine gets her teeth into some seriously meaty tragedy like Dowie Dens Of Yarrow, The Death Of Queen Jane and The Wife Of Usher's Well on an album she describes as "homespun"
Most of her work on This Earthly Spell actually pre-dates Fairest Floo’er, although a couple of songs were written later and Rivers Run, especially, is the moving (but non-cloying) anthem of a new mother ("I cross my heart and hope to live/Just long enough that can give it all to you my darling one/Rivers flow and rivers run...”
Most artists who follow the contemporary song route start simple and evolve into more complex and more sophisticated arrangements as they go along, but Karine has followed the opposite path and This Earthly Spell is far more stripped down than either of its predecessors. This partly represents a new-found confidence that her own material is now strong enough to stand on its own merits and is partly due to her sense of fulfilment touring with her compact four-piece band. "There doesn't feel like an awful lot missing when we're on the road so I did try to keep it restrained this album."
Working with Chris Wood, the master of understatement, has also influenced her greatly. She first sang with Wood at the Folk Britannia shows in London, sang on his (wonderful) latest album Trespasser and has gigged with him. "Chris Wood completely blew me away and his version of Thomas The Rhymer had a big impact on my writing on this album. For me he's the most inspiring person on the, British folk scene"
One of the songs on the album, Sorry, she describes as "a bit of a rant" and she's already had some complaints from people offended by its religious imagery, though she's reluctant to discuss the specifics of what inspired it. "It's more a general idea - sorry is a word used far too easily. Its offered to a higher power by people looking for redemption and I don't buy it"
Better Things, however, isn't as cryptic, eloquently expressing her distaste for Trident and nuclear power. "It's a song of disappointment more than anything else," she says. "It's all about a massive squandering of energy and brains on weapons when they' be better used on other things. You don't have to be an out and out pacifist to see that - it's a matter of being pragmatic"
She doesn't quite know how to balance touring with her new responsibilities ("this year will be a bit of an experiment) but if there's a way of making it work for the benefit of all parties concerned you can be sure she'll find it. "It's all a new adventure," she laughs.
Written by Colin Irwin
This interview was reproduced here with the permission of Properganda, a bi-monthly magazine produced by Proper Music Distribution, the UK's largest independent distributor.
Sound Clips from Fairest Floo'er (from Proper Music):
"Being pregnant did change my voice," she says. "I felt I had to sing out more, it forced me to make more of an effort and I think it sounds a little more ballsy as a result. 
