“Your first album - you have your whole life to do your first album. Some of the songs on ‘SPOONS’ were written when I was 12. So obviously this was gonna be a good bit different.” “This is where I’m at now, and that’s very different from where I was last time. I hope it does shock people. It’s not a sit-down-and-do-your-dishes record. I’ve lost friends over this album. It’s a real heart and soul record.”

Wallis Bird is back. The 27-year-old Irish singer and songwriter has made her second album ‘NEW BOOTS,’ set for release on the Dublin-based independent label Rubyworks (home of Rodrigo y Gabriela), and the follow-up to 2007’s ‘SPOONS’ (released on major label Island). The songs on ‘NEW BOOTS’ emerged from the shadow of splits - with Island, with her partner. They were recorded in her quaint home studio in London’s Brixton, and out in Mannheim, Germany, where Bird shares her time, with Christian (drums) and Michael (bass) Vinne, the German brothers she met in Ireland at a college-organised international music workshop.

Wallis has dug deep (into her heart, into her own pockets). She’s fought hard (with her old record label, with her emotions). She’s alchemised pop gold (from an acoustic guitar, from the last two up’n'down’n'up again years). There’s no holding down the girl who had her five fingers on her left hand sheared off in a freak accident when she was a child, but was back playing the guitar within six months. Wallis Bird is back, shouting, roaring,  carolling, belting out a set of blistering, heartlifting songs. As she sings on the joyful, stadium-sized acoustica of ‘To My Bones’, “we’re kissing the lips of strangers, we’re hugging whoever next we meet, oh life, I love you to my bones.”

“That’s just what I’m like,” elaborates Bird. “I wrote that song after one amazing night I had with my friends, where I realised how much fucking fun I have on this earth. I’m always kissing strangers, making friends with them. I love meeting people, getting them to step out of their skin - get them to do a limbo in a pub! So that’s in ‘To My Bones’ - I wanted for a long time to write about how much enjoyment I get from my life.”

“I knew the song might be a bit cheesy, but I had to write it. I’m not afraid to write an unabashed, positive song. They’re a lot harder to write than sad songs. Maybe people take something good from that. - fuck the recession, get on the buzz of enjoying life.”

In moving counterpoint is ‘Measuring Cities’, a folky, Celtic-flecked song with hymnal harmonies. Bird’s bell-clear, melodious, almost whispered vocal charts the rise and demise of her first meaningful love affair.

“Quite a big part of the relationship was all the travelling and all we had done together. It’s a pretty personal song but there are still a lot of gaps in there - it was such a hard break-up and it was so difficult to write,” admits this never-less-than-candid artist.

‘Can Opener’ is a song of a different stripe: a grungey, visceral protest howl. “That’s just me on record - I’m kind of a manic person. I give too much love then I get very aggressive,” she admits with a laugh. “The grunge side of that stems from my love of Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Mudhoney, Soundgarden. That song was a bit of a middle finger. I’m starting to learn about politics, after years of living an insular life. After the whole Island period, when I was just concentrating on myself, I had to get out of my own vanity. I started to meet new people who are heavily involved in politics and the green party and taking part in action in the world. That opened up my eyes.” ‘Lala Land’ is another sharp left turn. It recalls, in an entirely brilliant way, a reboot of the tooled-up R&B of Britney Spears’ Toxic.

“That was basically a conscious step away from ‘SPOONS’. I was working on a lot of riffs and seeing if I could write a radio song. I wanted to hone my craft, making songs more concise and accessible. So ‘Lala Land’ was an experiment: could I do something suitable for radio?”

But, being this questioning lyric-writer, Bird wasn’t content with just writing a big fat pop song that sounds like it came straight out of a Los Angeles hit factory. “It was also a pastiche of myself, and the lyric was a piss-take
of all those really simplistic, stupid pop songs. I got my friends and family to sing backing vocals. A lot of the album in general is a singalong, to make it sound chaotic.” Bird, very close to her noisy Irish family, wanted them to participate in this latest step on her musical and personal journey. “In part what this album was about was all the people who helped me get to this point.” Her family appear more directly in Mary, a singalong anthem that’s sure to be a live stormer when Bird and her band go back on the road (something they’re itching to do after enjoying high times supporting Gabrielle and Billy Bragg).

“A neighbour of my parents in our village died, and it had a huge effect on me,” she says of writing ‘Mary’ (”if my mum is feeling better we’ll take some sandwiches for the road… my dad talks about the weather and says the arse is falling out of the sky, the day that Mary died…”). “I saw my mum and dad losing a good friend, and heard them talking about their fond memories. I started to understand their sense of humour, and it made me get nostalgic for them, and for where I’d come from.”

Then, on the wildly and diversely entertaining ‘New Boots’, it’s back to the party. ‘The World Fell in Love’ is an emotional and hormonal explosion, recounting the start of Bird’s relationship.

“That’s directly about love, about a person who’s just magnificent and everyone thinks it too. It’s about being intensely in love with someone - you kiss, you see sparks and colours, you just lose yourself and you feel your whole body erupting.”

‘New Boots’ is an album of passion. Wallis Bird was bruised by her experiences with Island - the A&R who signed her became disinterested and eventually left the company. Bird was stranded in creative limbo, ideas and enthusiasm but also frustrations pouring out of her. Eventually she asked to be let go by the label, with The Sun using her storming version of Depeche Mode’s ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ for a TV advertising campaign (the newspaper’s switchboard was allegedly jammed with enquiries), her final bow of the year.

‘This album goes through me learning about myself, the relationship, which really changed my whole life, the break-up, my family… I thought myself that it was a good depiction of my life in the past two years - even the embarrassing bits. I’m so delighted the way things worked out. It made us fly, brought my team together like never before. I’m like, this is what we wanted!”

For Wallis Bird, it’s got to be honest and it’s got to be true. “Its called ‘NEW BOOTS’ because it’s a new start, a new beginning. You can kill music if you don’t keep intimate with it.”

‘Making this album,’ concludes this fired-up believer, “we had so many times when we had to beg and steal and borrow and it was really strenuous and tiresome. But we got on our worker boots and worked hard to make this happen. This is new, it’s exciting, and it’s me.”

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