With her operatic range and ethereal subcurrent to her every note, pop auteur Caroline Polachek, delivers her sophomore solo album which proves to be one of the most impressive projects we’ve been graced with this decade. Polachek has a long and experimental backlog of indie-pop, hyper-pop and alternative pop and dance music which has proven her worthy as one of the most talented artists of the 21st century. I would go so far as to say that Polachek is an academic in pop music and by God is she studious.
The range on this album doesn’t only refer to Polachek’s outstanding vocal abilities which would rank her up with the likes of Minnie Riperton, but also the aesthetics she is able to lucidly weave between while maintaining a very open atmosphere. So often on the album you find yourself drifting between locations; being beached by a storm to sitting atop a mountain in apricity.
The embodiment of desire is a powerful image to live up to going into a first listening of this album and she does live up to it. This project is fuelled by feelings of lust, sensuality, craving and adoration and if it were a burger I would bite right into it feel the grease ooze out of it like the joy that pours from the pores of any listener of Desire I Want To Turn Into You.
Opening with one of the albums most prevalent singles, Welcome To My Island puts the listener at peace on a palm tree filled island looking out at a clear blue ocean and invites the listener to be a part of the choral “hey-hey-hey’s” as she gives us a glimpse of her beautiful soprano. The song’s simple verses move from ear to ear with an infectious synth and groovy tech beat which follows into a bursting chorus proclaiming: “Desire I want to turn into you!” And you’re in. Ending the song with a moving nod to her late father: “I am my father’s daughter in the end, he says watch your ego, watch your head”; her teenage, almost pop-punk style vocals make the listener feel like dancing around their room screaming the chorus into the closest hairbrush they can find.
The second track on the album is the more poetic Pretty In Possible and is perhaps the closest look at Polachek’s incredible control and manipulation of her own voice. The fact that autotune exists nowhere across this piece of work is magnificent. Producer Danny L. Harle’s classical and video game influences are strong within this track with a beautiful string melody that rises above the hip-hop style drum beat and Polachek’s drawn back “da-da-da-da’s” to create an almost cinematic atmosphere.
The next two tracks to follow, Bunny Is A Rider and Sunset, are some of the earliest released singles and up the ante in terms of danceability but address very different styles of dance. The flamenco inspired Sunset is the musical equivalent of being spun around in the streets of Sevila by some handsome stranger you’ve just met. Bunny Is A Rider is one of the darker songs on the album and has a really cool leather jacket aesthetic attached to it which weaves in psychedelic undertones with the intertextual references to Alice In Wonderland: “Tryna go ask Alice; Tryna catch that rabbit”. While very repetitive, the hook is rather hypnotising, a bit like falling down a swirling rabbit hole; I wonder if that was intentional?
Perhaps the weakest and least memorable song is track five, Crude Drawing Of An Angel. The song lacks progression and falls short of the impressive production of other songs on the album. Having said that, the song’s imagery and lyricism is beautiful, and I would encourage Polachek fans to read the song as a poem where I think it succeeds in achieving higher poignancy. The song draws on the idea of art and inspiration as a source of life; “Draw your blood, draw your breath” and links to more modern ideas of gaze and desire with its adlibs; “camera one, camera two”. Though the weakest song on the album, with the bangers that precede-and proceed it, it is perhaps a much needed break from so much stimulation.
Moving onto my favourite track across the project, the garage driven, moving and grooving tribute to one of the most prevalent producers of the last decade who was also a friend to Polachek, SOPHIE. I Believe is a stunningly ethereal song which concerns itself with themes of mortality and spirituality. This song evokes something that I feel is akin to dancing on clouds; the echoey layered vocals and smooth yet booming drum sounds make you feel airborne. The beeping alarm which keeps you grounded while you fly in your mind because you can “look over the edge but not too far”. A delightful song. I implore listeners to watch Polachek’s NPR Tiny Desk performance where she commits to a stripped back version of this song, it brings a whole new thrill to its beauty.
The only features on the album which were a surprise, but certainly welcome ones come on the seventh track of the album which follows with the garage drum sound of the previous track, Fly to you (feat. Grimes and Dido). While track six alludes to taking flight, this number takes you fully away with these three soothing female vocal styles cushioning your take-off. The gentle guitar and synth sounds which elevate the feeling of flight add to the albums overall exploration of metaphysics.
One of the most desire-driven songs comes with Blood and Butter. If Shakespeare had written a pop song, this is what it would sound like. “No, I don’t need no entertaining when the world is a bed”, “lying at the foot of a linden in a naval ring inventing June”, “needing nothing but the sun that’s in our eyes, paint the picture in blood and butter”. The greasy indulgence of butter and the gory image of blood being the essence of love and desire is a prettier picture than the Mona Lisa. And to round off in true Macbethian fashion Polachek invites a glorious bagpipe solo which send us off into the throes of a war called love, where all is fair.
Slowing down your heartbeat with the next couple of tracks; Hopedrunk Everasking and Butterfly Net, come as you are coming down from the ecstasy of the previous tracks. Polachek’s shaky vocals on Hopedrunk reveal a vulnerability and a fear of what comes next after death, hoping desperately that she will not be alone. Butterfly Net comes as an equally hopeful and hopeless answer to its predecessors concerns, as she describes trying to cling to something intangible but ultimately accepting that uncertainty is life, love and death’s only certainty. Polachek has duetted with Weyes Blood on Butterfly Net for multiple live performances including Glastonbury festival where the two compliment the duality of the song perfectly.
The penultimate track, Smoke neatly leaves space for the finale to thrive. Smoke is a fairly simple song which draws us back to the island imagery we started with through the depiction of a volcano. It’s “na-na-na’s” also mirror that of the “hey-hey-hey’s” we receive on track one which both have Polachek wildly vocalising over the top of them.
The final track number twelve, Billions is a cascading waterfall of devotion to humanity and art. The reference to the headless angel is a possible reference to the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the “Cornucopeiac” description of her nourishing and overflowing love is self-referential, the cornucopia she describes is a metaphor for this vibrant and eclectic album which is clearly an artistic project built with passion and love. “Billions” could be a suggestion of her worth. I like to think it is the inclusion of the 8 billion humans that live on this planet, and she is suggesting that her topics are universal. And then in the most beautiful inclusion of humanity Polachek features the Trinity Croydon Choir to sing how close she feels to you, the listener. And trust me Caroline, I can feel it too. In perhaps the best use of children’s voices on a pop/rock record since Pink Floyd’s iconic The Wall, Polachek leaves us in exaltation as the voices fall in canon and fade out.
I am in awe of this body of work.
This album is a TEN.
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