-=- SHGZ -=-
* Shoegaze * Indie * Post-Rock * Grunge * Dream Pop * Psych-Rock * Ethereal *
ARTIST..: Caroline Polachek
ALBUM...: Desire, I Want To Turn Into You
GENRE...: Electronic
STYLE...: Pop, Indie Rock, Indie Electronic, Alternative Rock, Downtempo
STYLE...: Alternative Singer/Songwriter, Indie Pop, Experimental Ambient
YEAR....: 2023
LABEL...: Perpetual Novice
COUNTRY.: USA
PLACE...: Brooklyn, NY
BORN....: 20 June 1985, Manhattan, NY, USA
ENCODER.: FLAC 1.3.1 -8 -V
BITRATE.: 882 kbps avg
QUALITY.: 44.1kHz / 2 channels
SOURCE..: CD
TRACKS..: 12
SIZE....: 287.35 MB
URL..: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Polachek
https://consequence.net/2023/02/desire-i-want-to-turn-into-you-review-caroline-polachek/2/
- TRACKLIST
1 Welcome To My Island 3:52
2 Pretty In Possible 3:36
3 Bunny Is A Rider 3:13
4 Sunset 2:42
5 Crude Drawing Of An Angel 3:29
6 I Believe 4:07
7 Fly To You (feat. Grimes and Dido) 4:05
8 Blood And Butter 4:27
9 Hopedrunk Everasking 3:19
10 Butterfly Net 4:36
11 Smoke 2:57
12 Billions 4:57
Total Playtime: 45:20
With 2023's Desire, I Want to Turn into You, Caroline Polachek conjures her
own Europop fantasy island. Written and recorded with her longtime
collaborator Danny L. Harle, Desire, I Want to Turn into You finds Polachek
unapologetically embracing her inner pop diva, purposefully referencing a
'90s and early-2000s pop aesthetic. This is an album of balmy trip-hop
grooves, where electric bass riffs, finger-snap beats, and sky-blue synths
caress her angelically swooping vocals like dolphins chasing a boat. It's an
immediately evocative vibe that she commits to, deftly walking a fine line
between earnest romanticism and artful irony. Polachek is no stranger to cool
indie stances having spent the early part of her career as one half of the
electro duo Chairlift, a band who often played with their image and left fans
to guess if their intentions were more art or pop. She carried this approach
into her solo work with 2014's Arcadia (recorded under the alter ego Ramona
Lisa) and 2019's Pang, both of which showcased her baroque, synth-based
style. While none of the influences on Desire feel completely ironic and all
of the emotions feel earned, there is a sense of humor at play. It's a wry
artifice that Polachek commands throughout, whether it's her spoken word rap
on "Welcome to My Island" or the way she dances through the glass-mirror
harmonies of "Billions" like Enya feeling herself after a difficult divorce.
She even joins forces with guests Grimes and Dido on "Fly to You," an
anthemic pastel snow cone of early-2000s new age techno that presents the
singers as a kind of Three Muses of electro-pop. There's also the sultry
flamenco intensity of "Sunset" and clubby R&B of "Bunny Is a Rider." Adding
emotional weight to Polachek's luminous pop is the sense that she's working
through some tough experiences. Desire was recorded in the wake of her
father's death from COVID-19 in 2020, a person with whom she purportedly had
a difficult relationship. His spirit hangs Prospero-like over the album,
especially on the opening "Welcome to My Island" where Polachek sings, "I am
my father's daughter in the end/He says watch your ego, watch your head
girl/You're so smart so talented/But now the water's turning red/And it's all
your fault and it's all your mess." With Desire, I Want to Turn into You,
Polachek breaks free from outside expectations and transforms her inner
anxieties into an intoxicating pop euphoria.
*
- Caroline Polachek stretches the boundaries of the surreal as she explores
her desire for desire itself on her compelling new record -
Caroline Polachek knows how to create a great earworm - and well, she's
hardly lacking experience. With a career spanning nearly two decades, first
in Chairlift, and in more recent years as a solo artist, she's had time to
experiment, cultivate and nurture a unique sound. "Bunny is a / Bunny is a /
Rider / Can't find her", she rhythmically repeats alongside whistles and
harmonises on Bunny is a Rider. Who is Bunny? And where is she riding to? It
hardly matters; the glimpses of insight scattered across the album form a
compelling energy nonetheless.
This album is littered with strangely beautiful imagery: "Pity the mayflies
in the swimming pool at dawn" she sings nonchalantly on Pretty in Possible,
elsewhere evoking "blood and butter" as a metaphor for desire and need.
Polachek, after all, reveals in the album title alone her desire for desire
itself - to not simply feel desire, but to be it - and in her unabashed quest
she proves unafraid to stretch the boundaries of the surreal. Her vocal
delivery characteristically forms a part of the instrumentation. Here it
reaches new heights, stretching and searching, reaching fever pitch, fully
encapsulating what it means to be possessed by desire in all its rawness.
*
- CAROLINE POLACHEK ASCENDS TO GREATNESS ON 'DESIRE, I WANT TO TURN INTO YOU'
Caroline Polachek dives into the contradictory crux of the human experience
on Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, an album of breathtakingly original pop
songs. -
the prospect that pop is best when it's carefully planned out note by note
like its makers were huddled around an architect's blueprint with hard hats
on. They've dedicated an overwhelming share of that work to the reptilian
force of desire: that which bypasses logic and often upends civility, a
universal phenomenon that's also direly personal to each individual
experiencing it. It's led people to desperate circumstances that, in some
cases cut, caused them to cut their lives short. It's also not "love", and we
confuse the two far too easily, but we still find it worth celebrating for
its ability to illuminate our brief time on the planet. The paradox, then, is
that we declare such a celebration of the elemental to be best represented in
works that leash that chaos like an animal trainer, presenting it to us in
lucid, orderly terms.
Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is one of these future classics. On it,
Caroline Polachek feels destined to be connected to the auteurs that once
captured that paradox. As a solo artist, Polachek has dedicated her art to
all feelings unnameable, their extremes and dissonances integrated into her
indelible melodies. At the music's core remains her voice, a fascinating tool
she employs the way Bj÷rk used strings on Homogenic, hitting that
intoxicating cross between digital aesthetic and analog ethos. Pang (2020)
successfully introduced us to this tactic, but on Desire, it reaches an
apotheosis. Engaging at every turn and carefully calibrated to its point of
view, it represents art pop hitting yet another dizzy apex.
She knows this too, having released nearly half of its tracks as singles over
the last year. Each one is a diorama of its own, from the bipolar,
scrunchy-laden manifesto of "Welcome to My Island" to the dembow-based "Bunny
Is a Rider" to the flamenco flutter of "Sunset". The real flex is that the
deeper cuts are just as resonant. There's "Fly to You", a breakbeat sugar
high that makes Grimes and Dido sound like part of the same universe. "Pretty
in Possible" poignantly cruises on a bruised synth line and a vocal that
flitters like a fly with a crumpled wing. "Smoke", meanwhile, sees Polachek
achieving the diva moment of her dreams, dramatically crashing into the verse
as lava erupting from a volcano.
For over a decade, Polachek has demonstrated a deep understanding of pop
composition and a deft hand at executing it, but on Desire, she strips her
songs of any discernible chaff. She knows that "Blood and Butter" doesn't
need a third chorus but "Welcome to My Island" does. A slower, more
melancholy number like "Crude Drawing of an Angel" pays off patience with a
cathartic expansion at its end. Even on a minimal track like "Bunny Is a
Rider", she adds just enough ornamentation across its runtime to keep it
fully engaging. For those who value a smartly-crafted pop song, Desire is
absolutely stacked with them, top to bottom.
Though a few sonic sinews connect these tracks - not the least of which is a
certain 2000s-era mentality around unabashedly-digital pop - there's a
post-Internet placelessness to the album. Yet, Polachek sutures its disparate
styles together in the unique power of her voice. It's as virtuosic as we've
come to expect, but it finds even more hues here, from the fried low-end it
hits on "Billions" and "Blood and Butter" to the rounded midrange that
carries "Bunny Is a Rider". Throughout, her vocal melodies recall the
arpeggiated steps on a MIDI track, and it continues to be impressive when she
hits each note on its head, like an archer splitting arrows. Her lyrics and
phrases are just as precise, making meals out of malapropisms and laying down
metaphors that stick in the brain.
Polachek and co-producer Danny L. Harle constantly color her melodies with
atypical sounds and instruments that don't make sense on paper until you hear
them. A set of bagpipes announces a waterfall of vocal harmonies in the outro
to "Blood and Butter", while the chirp of a low-battery smoke detector
punctuates "Hopedrunk Everasking's" fragile narrative about wanting want. But
Polachek and Earle aren't just being pretentious or weird for weirdness'
sake; they're brilliantly adding dimension to songs about harboring clashing
logics and conflicting emotions inside yourself. Nothing illustrates this
better than "Billions", the record's cosmic closer, which weaves Indian tabla
and backmasking into its rumination on the contradictions embedded in human
existence. The song fades on the children of Trinity Choir singing the
record's last line, "I've never felt so close to you", a reminder that our
capacity to contradict ourselves is the messy truth that connects us all.
It's high-minded stuff, but Polachek never once gives up accessibility for an
intellectual edge. Despite its depth, Desire is as much pop as it is art, and
perhaps even more so. That accessibility partly comes from the familiarity of
its references, like how "I Believe" summons the sleekness of acts like
Everything But the Girl and Ray of Light or all the John Hughes movies that
might have featured "Welcome to My Island". Of course, the other side of that
coin is that Polachek is simply an exceptional songwriter. Desire, I Want to
Turn Into You, in its kaleidoscopic environment of pop hallmarks and
idiosyncrasies, is her at her escapist best. In time, it may yet carve her
out a niche within a litany of pop legends that once battled with the stormy
crux of the human experience and came out victorious.
*
- Caroline Polachek crafts a surreal, dizzying portrait of love on Desire, I
Want to Turn Into You -
Whereas her debut Pang dealt with anxiety and paranoia in often
claustrophobic soundscapes, Caroline Polachek's sophomore album, Desire, I
Want To Turn Into You, feels like floating on air.
The tight 12-track collection is doe-eyed, confident, and sonically varied -
not only is it wholly different from its predecessor, it's a portrait of
someone in love. From its opening screams welcoming the listener to her
world, Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is an island where romance is meshed
with clearly focus artistic vision.
Much more here than on Pang, Polachek writes almost as if to determine what
sounds good sonically, instead of having songs with a clear thesis. The
effect is lurid and fable-like, as if she's telling you myths instead of
truths, to the point where it can often be difficult to discern what a song
is really about. Not necessarily a criticism - but on "Bunny Is a Rider," she
sings that it's "dirty like it's Earth Day / Tryna wet that palette," and on
the twinkling closer "Billions," she describes herself as "Psycho / Priceless
/ Good in a crisis." Okay, sure! Her abstractness is an asset: these songs
read more like poetry, the sonnets she describes in "Billions." She's been
vocal about this stream-of-consciousness style, particularly on "Pretty In
Possible," which advances almost as if she's making it up on the spot.
Amongst these dreamy, loose works are ones rooted in the present - usually
love-drenched song of longing and passion. "Fly to You," which manages to
balance features from both Grimes and Dido, shows someone vulnerable enough
to go to their partner instead of retreating within themselves; "Crude
Drawing of an Angel" is a snapshot of messy mid-morning beauty; and "I
Believe" uses its stadium-bright synths to picture yearning at its highest
form: "Violent love / Feel my embrace." The best of which - and perhaps the
album's finest moment - is "Blood and Butter," which could easily slot into a
video game soundtrack centred in a cave. Backed by her own vocals, guitars,
and bagpipes(!), she's in awe of the body aura and gravity of her partner:
"Look at you all mythicalogica land Wikipediated," she sings, inventing words
and emotions only she could create. "I don't need no entertaining / When the
world is a bed," she admits, later revealing that she wants to get closer to
her partner than their new tattoo. It's otherworldly, blending the bizarre
and romantic in pure Polachek fashion.
Desire operates at a higher caliber than Pang - it's almost as if she's
gotten the 'accessible' music out of her system (if you could even call it
that) and has made ample room to experiment with her own creativity. It makes
sense that these songs exist in the liminal - she even admits that "real life
is a rumor" in the slow-burn "Hopedrunk Everlasting." In an ode to her late
father on "Welcome to My Island," too, she reckons with her distinctive
creative process: "He says watch your ego, watch your head, girl / ... Go
forget the rules, forget your friends / Just you and your reflection."
Polachek does things on her second effort that most artists never dream of
achieving. A clear mastermind at work, her brilliance is in every nook and
cranny of each song. The attention to detail - whether it be the layering on
"Sunset" or "Blood and Butter," or vocal melodies that branch between songs
and albums - make her one of the most innovative artists today. The desire
she sought to turn into on the title track is fully realised in these
mesmerising and wholly unique soundscapes.
*
- An astonishing blend of modern sophisti-pop and dance music that probes
into the confusing, sometimes grotesque depths of love. -
Caroline Polachek plays a long game. She released the first single from her
second album, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, almost two years ago. "Bunny
Is A Rider," with its nonsensical yet profound refrain about an elusive
woman-"I'm so non-physical"-went viral, infecting everyone's ears until its
weightless groove became the cryptic anthem of an entire year. She followed
it with cerebral singles like "Billions" and "Sunset," at turns mysterious
and vulnerable, before properly kicking off the album cycle with "Welcome To
My Island." It's a vibrant and bizarre mix of disco, soft rock and spoken
word, with an irresistible chorus: "Desire / I want to turn into you."
That hook, another blend of words that sound confusing but natural together,
tied all the loose ends of those singles together. Welcome to her island,
hope you like her, because you're not leaving. The title track, and the
12-song album as a whole, explores love and longing in all its gruesome
depths. If her debut album Pang was about emerging from the cocoon of a
breakup and finding giddy new happiness-"you're so hot it's hurting my
feelings"-then Desire, I Want To Turn Into You is about what happens when
you're not sure if you want the person or you want to be them.
Key example: "Blood And Butter," a William Orbit-tinged ballad that becomes
bouncier-buoyant nylon guitars, bagpipes-as its lyrics grow more
uncomfortable. "Let me dive through your face / To the sweetest kind of
pain," she sings, adding later, "Get closer than your new tattoo." In its
blend of electronic and acoustic, the vulgar and the tender, the song
outlines Polachek's visceral love, painted in "blood and butter"-when
something that sustains you also becomes part of you.
Polachek's philosophies of love unfurl over a survey of '90s music, lushly
prepared by her and Danny L. Harle (with further assists from the likes of
Sega Bodega and A. G. Cook). There's bubbly '90s pop on "Pretty In Possible,"
Jaco Pastorius-style fretless bass on the sparse "Crude Drawing Of An Angel,"
flamenco pop on "Believe." The album also subtly incorporates dance music in
a way that feels retro, authentic and au courant all at once. In a
PinkPantheress-dominated world, the floaty drum & bass of "Fly To You" might
be expected, but the chiming guitar on the chorus comes from a whole other
world entirely, sparkling like the clarion digital tones of an '80s Prefab
Sprout or Scritti Politti record.
That's the other thing about Desire, I Want To Turn Into You: it sounds
incredible, with deep, massaging lows and brilliantly bright textures. The
springy` UK garage of "I Believe" isn't quite fit for the club, but it still
hits hard, underlining the poignant lyrics-"I don't know / but I believe /
We'll get another day together," she sings in a song dedicated to the late
SOPHIE-and padding the edges with orchestra hits that would feel over-the-top
if they weren't so light and diaphanous, as if made out of gossamer.
Ditto the guitar on "Sunset," or the way the backing vocals on "Smoke" puff
through the air gracefully-or, especially, the near-infuriating sound of a
dying smoke alarm in the peripheries of "Hopedrunk Everasking," the album's
most naked, barely-there song with a chilling refrain: "Centuries come and go
/ They'll find our bones / And yet they won't." The loud bleeping adds a
lurid shade to the song, as if it were a transmission from a seedy motel
room, the last words of a flickering soul about to depart, only rescued by
the heartwarming sweep of "Smoke" that follows later: "And the fallout
doesn't phase me."
Those lines start an irrepressible bridge in "Smoke," which mirrors the
melody chanted at the beginning of "Pretty In Possible," one of those moments
where you start to comprehend the tapestry that Desire, I Want To Turn Into
You weaves. "Pretty In Possible" is a litany of metaphors and worries over a
jaunty beat, while "Smoke" is the resolution, the comfort that even if you
end up hurt, you hurt together. This sentiment bleeds into the
impressionistic mirage of "Billions," a track of bizarre tercets-"Salting,
flavour / Lies like a sailor / But he loves like a painter," for example. In
the video, Polachek eats bunches of grapes, living a life of sensual
indulgence as she mangles the word "Billions" at the end of each line, lost
in reverie, before the song finishes surreally with a children's church
choir. It's a vision of love in Caroline Polachek's world: meted out in words
that sound as luxurious as their meanings, presented in gilded textures and
through a Carrollian multiverse of shapes, sounds and ideas that only becomes
richer the longer you spend there. It might take some time, but it's
endlessly rewarding.
*
- Inspired by powerhouse vocalists and electropop of the '90s and early
aughts, Caroline Polachek's new head-spinning, life-affirming album creates a
space for total abandon, finds Noah Ciubotaru -
On 'Billions', the second single and final track of Caroline Polachek's new
album, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, she sings of "sexting sonnets," of
"working the angles," of a man who "lies like a sailor" but "loves like a
painter." Her phrases heave through a cycle of breathy registers, then crash
into a wail of the song's title. Those repetitions, moored by no predictable
structure, are hypnotic, intoxicating, and the lyrics heighten the sense of
time being distended. Sending sonnets to lovers is a dated pastime, sexting
perhaps one of our generation's most cherished modes of communication.
"Working the angles" plays off that latter image, but the mention of a
painter casts that line in a different light. Polachek revels in these
juxtapositions, collapsing epochs so her music assumes a scale as
unfathomable as billions.
Her pursuit of that heady experience led to 'Bunny Is A Rider', the
free-associative, anti-surveillance anthem that launched Polachek's current
era and served as Desire's lead single. With its inscrutable lyrics, 'Bunny
Is A Rider' marked a departure from the more diaristic style of songwriting
on her 2019 album Pang as well as a rejection of contemporary pop music's
bend towards literalism. "Can you cut that check? / Crush that wreck / Run
out on empty on 'em?" Polachek sputters, sounding like an AI that absorbed
human lingo and then started to malfunction. Released at the peak of summer
2021, this song, disjointed from everyday meaning, resonated with the
brain-mushed abandon of post-vaccine existence. Even as Polachek doles out
abstractions and declares herself to be "so nonphysical" in the chorus,
'Bunny Is A Rider' provides an embodied thrill, pulsing with a thick,
throat-quaking bassline, punctuated by record scratches, bird chirps, and
cheerful whistles. It's a triumph of Polachek and her chief collaborator
Danny L. Harle's meticulous sound design.
Polachek's work reflects her studied grasp of the paradox that pop music can
ground people in this world by bringing them to another one. As Pang opened
with 'The Gate' - which was given fantastical, gothic form in album art and
as the backdrop to Polachek's live performances - Desire establishes setting
with its first track, 'Welcome To My Island'. This place promises bliss, but
off the bat, there's something unnerving about it; listeners are greeted by
Polachek letting out howls that grow increasingly piercing as they strain
past the 20-second mark. "Hope you like me / You ain't leaving," she taunts.
But as the song builds, it seizes the euphoria it so maniacally chases,
summoning the rush of '90s electro with a Daft Punk-toned vocoder echoing the
verses and a thumping, powerhouse hook that erupts like Cher's 'Believe'.
The grandeur of '90s and early-aughts pop underlies much of this album's
ambition. On 'Pretty In Possible', the pairing of Polachek's nimble yodels
with a shuffling beat calls to mind Imogen Heap and Guy Sigsworth's Frou Frou
project; the drum and bass production on 'I Believe' could be lifted from an
Everything But The Girl record, if not for the synth flashes that lace it
with more sprightly energy; and 'Fly To You' features Dido (as well as
Grimes), whose tight control of her vocals resembles the way Polachek flips
between octaves. But for all these connections, Desire avoids feeling
derivative by crossing so many wires, drawing from a more adventurous time in
pop and placing innately familiar elements in new contexts.
A harbinger of Desire's direction was Polachek's cover of The Corrs' 2000 hit
'Breathless', which she released with a batch of Pang remixes a year after
the album came out. "'Breathless' is one of those beautiful songs that
retains this magical, nostalgic, pure pop place in people's imaginations,"
Polachek told Crack in 2021. "Even people who were too young to experience
that song when it first came out." This conception of pop as a destination, a
perfect form that exists in our collective unconscious, accessible through a
perfect song, is captured in Desire's cover art: Polachek crawls toward an
inexplicable mound of sand in a subway car, looking up with a gaze fiercely
set on something of no interest to the commuters around her. She's out of
step, out of time; but with her headphones on, fingers in the sand, she's in
touch with something immeasurable.
-=- SHGZ -=-
-=-=-==-=-=-
Shoegaze
is a genre of alternative rock that
originated in the late 80s. The genre is very
difficult to define, and it is even more difficult to evaluate music
within it. Generally, the genre is characterized by its
shimmering vocals, reverberating guitars, and
textural distortion that create
a tranquil, opaque
feeling.
---==--==---