The Stool Pigeon music newspaper

Had I encountered Scout ‘Emma Louise’ Niblett a few days previously to our meeting, I may have stumbled upon quite a different beast to the sleepy, affable 33-year-old woman before me. Having gone through the trauma of hypnotherapy to alleviate her nicotine cravings, it seems that Nottingham’s success story has stuck two fingers up at the nation’s smoking ban for the sake of humanity.

“I lasted two and a half days and then I turned into the girl from The Exorcist,” she says with such a softly spoken and sweet child-like voice that it’s hard to imagine her screaming the heads off people like the living possessed. “I thought I’d better start again until I can handle not smoking. I should have just gone through with it, but I felt bad for the people around me. I was really bad. I turned into a really horrible person - bullying people. It was horrible.”

Soon out is Scout Niblett’s fourth LP, This Fool Can Die Now, and it is, in no uncertain terms, the best work she has conceived during her six-year professional music career. Produced with the help of engineer and Shellac frontman Steve ‘don’t call me a producer’ Albini, with additional vocal duties supplied by Will Oldham (Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy), This Fool Can Die Now maintains Niblett’s trademark minimalist approach to music - sparing drums and grungy guitars - while surreptitiously delving into soulful country and experimenting with thoughtful string arrangements.

Niblett’s shift towards collaborating certainly adds another dimension to her work, and it’s hard to think of a better pairing for her fragile-meets-squawking vocals than Oldham’s husky, velveteen delivery. Each song they perform together plays out like some kind of romantic tragedy, but why the sudden change in direction when her own voice is distinctive enough?

“I’ve been wanting to have other people singing on stuff before,” she says, “but I couldn’t work out quite how to do it. And then I thought that he was perfect for it because I’ve always loved his voice, so I just asked him to do it. I think it works really, really well.”

The partnership offers the album a wonderful, rueful despondency that’s apparent in many of the songs, from the heart-aching ‘Kiss’ with its harmonising (“A kiss could have killed me / If it were not for the rain”), to their cover of ‘River Of No Return’, famously sung by Marilyn Monroe in the film of the same name. Niblett and Oldham sing the track with the kind of melancholy and torment that only one who’s been close to death and rejection can appreciate. In fact, its inclusion makes Niblett appear as an almost tragic figure.

“I just really love those songs,” she explains. “To me they feel really poignant. I would sing them all the time at home.”

Indeed, it’s hardly surprising to find out that, at the time of writing This Fool Can Die Now, Niblett was as far from a ‘happy’ place as one can be.

“I think I was quite sad when I was writing,” she says. “My mum and step-dad died this year and I think that’s had a huge impact on me emotionally. I’ve been dealing with the grief of that and it’s been quite hard, really.”

This Fool Can Die Now shouldn’t be misconstrued as a self-indulgent therapy session for Niblett, however. Also included are the playful elements that were prominent on previous recordings, Kidnapped By Neptune and Sweet Heart Fever. Notably, she features cartoonist David Shrigley’s ‘Dinosaur Egg’ and still has a penchant for going on stage in wigs and air traffic control jackets - behaviour possibly connected to her contemporary arts training at Nottingham Trent University.

Such shtick has caused Niblett grief in the past. When she was living in her native Nottingham, she was far from the praised singer/songwriter/stage performer she’s credited as today. So ruthless was the British music scene back then, it triggered her move to the States to find some common ground and mutual appreciation.

“There was a point when people were actually coming up to me and telling me that they didn’t like it,” Niblett explains. “People were going out of their way to say they didn’t like it.”
It couldn’t have been easy starting out and coming against so much animosity.

“I think it was actually really good for me,” she continues, “it forced me to leave and go further afield where I thought people might appreciate what I’m doing. I found the whole music industry in England a bit difficult - at that point anyway; it’s not like that now. Before, there just wasn’t interest - I couldn’t make a living playing shows or selling records or anything. It was like a cultural desert for what I was doing, unfortunately. So it got me out of Nottingham.”

Now residing in the music hub that is Portland, Oregon, Niblett has found a place of solitude for her creative outlets. But with all the negativity coming from her native country, does it ever make Niblett question her own endeavours?

“I think it’s really important to not worry about what other people think too much, or otherwise you’re not going to be able to express yourself,” she says. “You’re not going to express your real self, because you’re going to be too worried about how people are going to perceive you.”

Having recorded the album of her career so far, where will Niblett take it from here?

“I don’t know. I’ve started writing a little bit here and there. What I’m doing is how it always is when I start playing - it’s just me in my living room with a guitar and a microphone. I totally can’t tell how it will come out, which I really like - I really like not having any idea until there seems to be some sort of pull some way or another towards some sort of idea. I find that exciting; that when you’re writing it feels like you’re following something that’s not really to do with what you’ve pre-conceived. It’s really exciting to write when you suddenly realise, ‘Ah, this seems to be going like this.’”
If Scout Niblett’s former albums and live appearances prove she has the same feisty, playful nature as the protagonist she’s named after in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird, then This Fool Can Die Now also proves she has a big enough heart and soul to play the role to the full.