Po!

Po! was a great name for a band in 1987 when Ruth Miller formed the group 'to get out a lot of anger I had at the time'. Ruth created Rutland Records as a cottage industry powered by fanzines, John Peel, the worldwide postal service and mixtapes. Over about 10 years, the strength of Ruth's songwriting, combined with jangly guitars and upbeat melodies gained them fans in Japan, Spain, the US, Germany and anywhere that was part of the pre-Internet music network. Ruth always took an oblique angle on things with her songs about power, girlhood, small towns and revenge. Songs like 'Fay', 'Danny's Girl', 'Tina' 'Jacqueline's House' and 'Haunt You' sound melodic and cheery but have sinister and bleak themes. Others track the minutiae of ordinary life growing up as a young girl. Following a John Peel Radio 1 session and 'The Alphabet EP' being named NME single of the week, Po! stopped recording and playing for more than 10 years during which time the Internet grew up. Ruth has re-formed Po! with a new guitarist and is galloping off with them, releasing as much of the Po! back catalogue as possible and writing new songs for this and other artists. Back to the name Po! - it is now a terrible name which doesn't google well; exclamation marks are not significant, and there are hundreds of other artists around the world with similar names. So to find out more, you need to include some of these: Po, Ruth, Rutland Records, indie-pop, Leicester, and you'll get there - dig and you'll find!