The Calcination of Scout Niblett 1 comments

By Andy Whitman

Emma Louise “Scout” Niblett likes to play with preconceptions. Raised in Nottingham, England, she takes her nickname and inspiration from the southern American heroine of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird. Frequently and lazily described as a folksinger, she’ll lull you with a sweetly demure soprano and then sucker punch you with a feral howl and a blast of discordant guitar feedback right out of the Nirvana back catalogue.

And she parlays her wholesome nickname and girl-next-door looks into music that is as terrifyingly removed from Ward and June Cleaver suburban normalcy as can be imagined.

Scout is, in fact, fairly disturbing. But in a world where “disturbing” has been neutered and redefined as a marketing term, as a signifier for grimacing and smearing your face with eyeshadow (see Lady Gaga on the recent Grammy Awards for reference), Scout Niblett is a whole different kind of disturbing.

For lack of a better label, think of her as Uncommercially Disturbing, which might be shorthand for barely hanging on in real life. With her plain dresses and her sensible shoes, she looks like she could be a shy wallflower working behind the counter at the 7-11. But then she opens her mouth:

Why would you think that you make me drink?
I'm a drunk, reasons I don't need
Just like you
And I'd be in my car if I weren't in this bar
Taking pills
Take my keys
I might drive me to Mexico

When you accompany that with an overdriven electric guitar and an off-key banshee wail, you end up with a sort of Grunge Dark Night of the Soul, and the resulting philosophical and musical tsunami can leave you breathless and shaken. Think too much about it, and it might actually keep you awake at night.

Scout’s latest album is called The Calcination of Scout Niblett, “calcination” in this case referring to the chemical process by which metals are refined and purified. Of course, there are spiritual overtones to the metaphor, and Scout plunges headfirst into the heavenly and demonic fray, engaging in the kind of incriminating self-doubt and confessional malaise that has characterized poetic navel gazers from Joni Mitchell to Jolie Holland.

But there's absolutely nothing pretty or precious about this music. What it sounds like is a suicide note from a Mississippi Delta juke joint, distorted guitar crackling through a cheap amp, and it's a uniquely and sadly harrowing listening experience.

The precedents for this type of tormented soul baring are not so much musical as literary: Quentin Compson in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Esther in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Ivan Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov.

That’s not meant to suggest that Scout Niblett can summon the same literary gravitas as those fabled writers. But it is intended to signify the level of despair that is at work here. There are some albums where all pretense of self-sufficiency, of coping in the face of adversity, is swept aside, and the artist is left to face the yawning abyss. Some find faith, some find drugs, and some find nothing at all and can conjure no reason to continue.

At this point I don’t know what Scout will find. But this is one of those albums. There is a part of me that genuinely doesn’t like what I hear. It’s unpleasant. It’s unnerving. But I can't stop listening to these songs. They are the musical equivalent of driving by a six-car pileup on the freeway.

Perhaps there is hope. I would like to think so. There is, for instance, this:

Welcome to my self-made sweat box
This is where I take it all off
I've got to sweat it out,
I'll cook those monsters out
I'm not coming out of here until my soul appears

However long it takes, babe. Just come out.

The rawness of the music fully matches the rawness of the words. "Cherry Cheek Bomb" starts with a proto-Led-Zeppelin guitar riff that is equal parts Jimmy Page and Son House. Opening track “Just Do It,” a brooding reflection on the need for change, gives way to a caterwaul of an electric guitar workout, an instrumental expression of the pent-up sorrow that the voice and words cannot express.

And on the epic finale "Meet and Greet," an incredibly weary recapitulation of life on the road, night after night, Scout recounts meeting a fan who asks, "Hey, when you gonna learn to play that thing?" She answers the question with a guitar solo that doesn't so much build as erupt; a great, squalling splat of noise that serves as a giant middle finger and farewell to the world. I can only hope that it isn't meant too literally.

The ability to burrow down to these painful depths is rare. This woman needs to keep making music, and you need to hear her.