Polly's debut CD was released on Feb. 2, 1998 to enthusiastic reviews and airplay.

Engineered and mixed by Michael Haumesser at NotNoise Studio, Santa Cruz, Taste the Wall was made in a 24-track analog environment. Polly has fond memories of assistant engineer Mabel Haumesser, who was very young, enthusiastic, and didn't know her own strength. In point of fact she was (and still is) a big friendly dog.

In the mid-90s Santa Cruz was the center of a thriving music scene. Bands like Mehitabel and archy (of which Michael was a member), Lackadaisy, Dresden, and numerous others had created a wonderful trademark sound for the area. Things have changed a bit in recent years, as the town has gotten rather gentrified and many musicians have been forced to leave the area by rising rents and loss of performance venues.

Polly was especially impressed with Michael's technique of assigning individual drum machine sounds to their own tracks -- which enabled him to do beautiful things with panning. Check it out!


Here are the eight album tracks:

1. "Taste the Wall"

in which a woman has a spiritual awakening. (Lyrics)

"I chose for my heroine to say 'I am Heisenberg, I am Jezebel' because I wanted to contrast two opposing character and have the woman say that she's embodying all these contradictory things."

 5. "The Swan"

unable to escape, a captive waits to be destroyed (Lyrics)

Hear the entire song at MP3.com by clicking here.

2. "Keeny Zuke"

an exploration of predatory desire (Lyrics)

 6. "Four Lives"

the dead, the living, all souls are connected (Lyrics)

3. "Smoke"

a flute player learns about smoking (Lyrics)

"My friend Jenny Valcov was trying to explain to me in email what it was like to smoke. She is a former smoker and I've never partaken. The email she wrote me sounded so poetic I made it into a piece."

 7. "Road Spiders"

I've been on the road too long. (Lyrics)

"This is an instance where the song title came first and I wrote the song to fit the title. The title comes off the back of Chrissie Hynde's famous jacket."

4. "Skara Brae"

visiting the ancient island village (Lyrics)

 8. "Aerodynamic"

the souls of airplanes (Lyrics)