I’ve been listening to a lot of Eels recently and just clocked John Parish reconnected with Mr E for Eels’ “Extreme Witchcraft” album.

I’ve thought for ages Polly and Mr E could work well together - anyone know if they have, or have even just met?

And if you were suggesting new collaborations for Polly, who would you want to hear?

Not really a duet idea but I’d love to hear her voice meshing with other female voices. On the past three album she has sung mostly against male backing vocals, but I really love that one little moment during the “In the Dark Places” climax when other women join in.

To my knowledge PJ and Eels never collaborated, nor i'm 100% positive they even met. What i'm sure though, as reported by a gardener's 15-years-old post (here:https://www.thegardenforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=719&p=8244&hilit=eels#p8244), is that Everett loved White Chalk and wished for Polly to be in his next album:





As for fantasy duets, one name comes to my mind: Jeff Buckley. Gosh, how glorious a PJH-JB collaboration would have been!

For some reason i think PJ's 2004 composing/writing style would have been really cool to see mixed in a collab with someone like Karen O/Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Cat Power or Adalita/magic Dirt. These are all retro-fantasy collabs though, since that era ended long ago.

I can't really make up my mind on a realistic collaboration though... mmmmh... once i wished for a crazy metal version of Polly, so, i don't know, a duet with Glenn Danzig + a cool metal solo? his voice is often compared to Elvis', so that would be pretty funny! Heck, we could go even crazier and suggest an italian collab! PJ's singing and writing and Ludovico Einaudi composing some weird neo-classical song would be bonkers... or a folk/Neo-medieval collab between PJ and the so-called Italy's Minstrel, Angelo Branduardi.

All the above are just completely nuts ideas, but would propel PJ's musical career in uncharted and experimental places... much like what PJ has been doing all these years, if you think about it.

That is one of the greatest things that never happened, I feel like it was written in the stars but something glitched. I love Jeff, so anything with the two of them would have been welcomed. I actually would have preferred him on Stories rather than mr York (whose voice I can't stand - sorry).

Other impossible fantasy duets: Angelo Badalamenti (just imagine a score made by the two of them!) and Nick Drake.

On the possible side, I'd love for her to do anything with Colin Stetson. The combination of his saxophone playing and her singing could make something really interesting in my opinion.

I agree, whenever I think of my dream PJH collaborators it’s mostly instrumentalists, not other vocalists—like Colin Stetson, Bendik Giske, Alabaster dePlume, Oliver Coates, Shabaka Hutchings, Kali Malone etc.

they likely met on the set of TOTP 98



Dean Blunt? They seem to have mutual admiration for each other, so it's possible.

Yesss, Dean Blunt! I can easily imagine him working with Polly in the style he explored with Elias Rønnenfelt on Lucre, for example.