Paloma Faith interview

“I

t’s nice to speak to somebody who also sounds like they’re under the age of 10 on the telephone. It’s like two little kids having a chat!” says Paloma Faith with a mischievous chuckle. “I always get asked when people ring up about bills if my mum or dad are at home.

“If it’s the gas company, they just go, is your mum or dad in? And I’m like, I pay the bills here!”

She certainly does. Pop with a jazz vibe and a red-lipped, pouting nod to all things retro, Paloma Faith blazed onto the British music scene in 2009, indelibly marked by her awe for idols Etta James and Billie Holiday.

A girl like MARMITE

Funny, chatty, attention seeking and utterly, charmingly blatant about it, she announced herself with flamecoloured hair twirled into a neck-breaking tower and the punch and glamour of her first two singles, Stone Cold Sober and New York.

The girl had class, burnished with style and an eccentric, intriguing background.

Born in North London, she was raised by her mum (“she brought me up to be everything she wasn’t”), working intermittently as a life model, magician’s assistant and cabaret singer until she famously walked out of an audition with Epic Records because the scout vetting her wouldn’t turn his phone off. Several months later, they signed her.

up tempo Since then she’s had parts on the big screen (St Trinians/ The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus) and the small (Coming Up/Blandings), and now the 32-year-old is touring her new album, A Perfect Contradiction.

“I wanted to do something more up tempo,” she buzzes, explaining what drove the record. “When I was on tour, I really enjoyed the bits where I got to dance.”

It was also a chance to make an album with more of a “celebratory feel” that would balance out her back catalogue: the soaring, punchy debut Do You Want The Truth Or Something Beautiful? and the 2011 follow up, Fall From Grace, which Paloma happily admits “was quite ballady”.

This time around she’s gone for a funkier edge. Seventies dance beats, RnB undercurrents and staccato lyrics make up first single Can’t Rely On You, produced by Pharrell Williams, while Only Love Hurts Likes This recalls some of the warmth and soul of her former offerings.

“I keep jumping from one thing to another, trying out something differently sonically,” Paloma agrees. And the name? “I think that I am one,” she says simply.

Throughout A Perfect Contradiction she mines the “pull between light and shade” for material, shaking into frame the harder bits in life in order to extract the goodness.

“You can’t really enjoy anything unless you’ve had a really hard time,” she states matter of factly. “All the bits that have happened to me or have gone wrong have really made me appreciate it when they don’t, so that’s why they’re perfect contradictions; because I’m speaking in the lyrics about hardship, but they’re hopeful sounding songs.”

Despite the sweetly dark thread of trauma that thrums through her music, putting the album together wasn’t quite such a CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE

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With a new album and a sell-out tour about to kick off, ELLA WALKER tussles with refreshingly frank songstress Paloma Faith about being a perfect contradiction.

celebrity interview

extreme responses because I’m quite defiant in who I am and I don’t really buckle. It’s always either ‘Oh my god, I love her, she’s amazing!’ Or, ‘What an absolute idiot’.”

You can’t argue that she’s not got an army of fans though (her Cambridge Corn Exchange gig this month sold out instantly). “It’s obvious to me the humans in this country respond well to me,” she laughs. “I think they like the fact I don’t sugar-coat everything and I’m genuinely honest.”

Dangerously quick-witted and intimidatingly up front, Paloma is known for having a mouth on her. Not that she cares. “I think people are just afraid of being controversial,” she chatters. “Even my mum gets scared when I say things. She’ll call me up and go ‘Oh my god Paloma, why did you bother?!?’”

Her most recent plunge into the press’s grubby, excited mitts, was a comment on Beyoncé (who she adores), in which she said it was a shame the Drunk In Love singer markets sex as power when “she’s naturally sexy and she’s naturally intelligent and powerful as a woman without adhering to the male gaze in that way”. Cue a whole lot of bloggers sharpening their claws for some out of context celeb juiciness. . .

sensational style But worrying about offending people isn’t something Paloma wastes much time on. “I think I’m a brave person.

I’m willing to endure the consequences of my actions,” she says: “You can’t have everyone like you.”

Paloma’s bravery extends to her wardrobe; a cornucopia of haute couture shapes, saturated colours and wefts of shimmering, eye-popping fabric. The last time she visited Cambridge Corn Exchange she tottered out entirely drenched in sequins with art deco arcs of black and gold concealing her arms, swinging shafts of golden light high into the rafters.

Sometimes you can’t help but be more fussed about what she’s wearing, than what she’s singing.

wrenching process. “I was a little bit like a competition winner for most of the experience,” she squeaks. “I had a lot of people who were saying yes to working with me that are just the best in the business.”

sensitive soul Cambridge Corn Exchange, Saturday, May 24 at 7.30pm.

SOLD OUT.

Raphael Saadiq, John Legend, Plan B, Pharrell and Stuart Matthewman are just some of the gold-plated names that said yes (the list is long). It’s impressive, particularly for a songstress that doesn’t seem able to consistently (if ever) please critics.

The Guardian slapped two stars on A Perfect Contradiction while The Telegraph opted for three. Does she read her reviews? “Occasionally,” she admits, musing: “Critics give me quite a hard time. They’re a bit cynical and I don’t know what it is, I think it might be something to do with my enthusiasm or the fact I’m quite driven.”

She tends to shrug it off, despite being a self-confessed “sensitive” soul. “I don’t really adapt to suit people, I’m not a fading violet, I just am what I am and people like it or they don’t,” says Paloma bluntly, when asked why she considers herself “like Marmite”. “I tend to generate quite CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE

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“It’s not really important to me, it’s just part of who I am,” she replies when asked what style means to her. “I’ve always dressed up; my mother brought me up to be very well presented as a kid. She’d lay my outfit out the night before school every day and tell me about the importance of colour co-ordination.”

So it’s a family trait? “I think it’s because my mum comes from a very poor background and it was quite ingrained in her and her family to always come across as worthy because they felt they were lacking in other things.

“Obviously that, combined with the fact I’m quite a creative person, means I come out with quite experimental versions of that,” she says wryly. “I’ve never been the kind of person who’s comfortable not looking nice.”

When you come from a family mainly made up of wellturned out, opinionated women (her dad was out of the picture by the time she was 4), it’s no wonder. “Every time I see my mum and I don’t wear make-up she asks me if I’m well. I’m like mum, I just don’t have any make-up on and she’s like, ‘Well you look dreadful’,” Faith cackles.

While the style obsession might have been passed down, Paloma reckons her music career is thanks to pure graft and determination on her part. “I don’t believe in anything being in the blood,” she says. “If it was in my blood, I wouldn’t be a singer. They’ve got no rhythm and no voice between the lot of them my family.”

Thank goodness she does.