Caroline Polachek - Desire, I Want To Turn Into You (Album Review)
Thursday, 16 February 2023
Written by Will Marshall
Photo: Nedda Asfar
It didn’t take long following the dissolution of her former band Chairlift for Caroline Polachek to step out into the world of pop under her own name. In 2019 she skipped beyond the production-focused work of her early solo career to release ‘Pang’, a top-drawer record that hummed with avant-pop promise.
Almost four years later, ‘Desire, I Want To Turn Into You’ arrives with plenty of questions hanging over it. Chief among them: can she expand on the exciting moves made by its predecessor? In short, yes. This is an album driven by self-assurance, confidence and creativity. Polachek is in command of a sound that's totally her own.
Welcome To My Island pairs wailed vocals, showcasing her stellar range, with staccato synths and beats, while Pretty In Possible changes tack, its huge vocal runs melded with a radio pop backbone straight from the early 2000s.
A simple sonic approach, refusing to overload a song with individual elements, gives Polachek’s voice all the room it could need as well as letting her experiment and use her vocals as an ever-reliable anchor.
Sunset brings in Spanish guitar atop syncopated claps while Polachek opens up a far more soulful side to her performance. It’s a far cry from Crude Drawing of An Angel, which flirts with trip hop and a pitch-bending bassline, and Fly To You, which is a breakbeat-driven, airy song with star turns from Grimes and Dido.
To call ‘Desire, I Want To Turn Into You’ an eclectic album does it a disservice; it’s maximalist in its influences but streamlined in its execution. It’s always definitively Polachek, and it's all delivered with her signature humour and mellifluous voice. Welcome to her island.
Caroline Polachek Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
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