Desire, I Want To Turn Into You: A Dive Into Caroline’s New Album
It’s been two years since Caroline Polachek released Bunny Is A Rider, the catchy lead single of her sophomore album. It might have taken a long wait, but waiting pays off so well as the arrival of the single’s accompany album takes music into a different level. No other musical craft has shaken and redefined Pop so rigidly than Desire, I Want To Turn Into You. The year is far from over, but Polachek might have already taken the trophy.
On her second solo album, the former Chairlift vocalist uses her encyclopedic musical knowledge and formidable voice as vehicles for flipping the concept of the “perfect pop song” in unexpected ways. Polachek experiments soaring sopranos while exploring the facets of romance and desire. Along the way, she switches from analog to digital, back and forth and pours her heart out. More than that, there are lush feelings, unique details and hundreds of other reasons to prove Desire’s beauty.
Desire and other concepts
As the title itself suggests, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You explores the lushness and many facets of desire. The phrase has a double meaning, either expressing Polachek’s inclination to use desire as a coping act/solace or transforming a human into the emotion itself. Either way, both signify an uncontrollable and unquenchable need. She emphasizes our nature to want and want and want endlessly, cross the vast expanse of our lives. This manifests in different ways: love, lust, dreams, material things and all other concepts. But in this album, she highlights the first two things.
Most of the songs in the album are love ballads in hyperboles and shrooms. These exude romantic yearnings but always with chaotic twists, references and figurative languages. For example, in the ecstatic Welcome to My Island, Caroline Polachek is Calypso greeting a shipwrecked Odysseus, waving us to her oasis. She exclaims “Welcome to my island, hope you like me, you ain’t leaving”—showing obsession. In Blood and Butter, she draws a picture of her and her lover in blood and butter. Romance is in the air with the lines “Let me dive through your face, to the sweetest kind of pain” and “Oh, I get closer than your new tattoo.”
If the former songs are too obsessive and striking, she slows down in some portions to evoke shyness and grace. In Smoke, she compares herself to a volcano. She says “Oh, don’t worry about me, it’s just smoke,” to emphasize that love is nothing, even on the inside, she’s boiling and waiting for explosion. On the other hand, I Believe portrays immortality and hopefulness. She dedicates the song to her friend, SOPHIE, who passed away a few years ago. She promises her “I don’t know but I believe we’ll get another day together.”
Genre-bending Pop
The production for Caroline Polachek’s sophomore album is immensely unique and diverse. She’s purposively pushing the Pop genre to its limits, taking it to new places. You will hear bagpipes, muggy tropical basslines, faint bird chirps, and statics that resemble the rustle of fronds. She uses the effective sensibilities of the electropop of the 90s and turns it against gentler musical elements. Some songs also feature vocoder echoing for her voice, which deforms the vocals into wailings that seem to come from the sirens. The details are so immersive that even with just the background production, you will already be transported to dimensions. Imagine the intensity, given that her voice elevates it even more.
In Sunsets, she channels flamenco music. The song tinged with Spanish and Italian folk melody. It captures the lively and cathartic vibe of Madonna’s La Isla Bonita. In Crude Drawing of An Angel, you can hear birds hooting and chirping as a droplet of water serves as a beat. If you’re looking for the most prototypical Pop song, the album serves that in Bunny Is A Rider. It’s just Polachek’s voice matched with thumping basses, but even with that, she adds unique flairs like catchy whistle fillers. In Billions, the closing songs, she ends the song in a harmonious choir.
Vocals to die for
It is Caroline Polachek’s vocals that mainly shine in Desire, I Want To Turn Into You. You can already feel that as soon as the opening track starts, where she harmonizes with herself in echoey screams. Her voice resembles a siren singing in melodical glory, attracting humans into an illusion. And it’s not only that, her voice is also flexible—chameleonic. She coos, she whispers, she shouts. Her sopranos are soaring along the birds of her island, while her low register swims with the whales. Sometimes Polachek seems so breathless with desire that she can only come up to its surface to gasp up a few intelligible lines at a time. It’s vulnerably beautiful and emotional.
Welcome To My Island shows the glaring peak of her vocals. In the song, she doesn’t use electric guitars or any other instruments because she uses her vocals to duplicate those. She exhibits a wailings that are so gentle, curling into waves. In Pretty In Possible, she drags some words to showcase her flexible vocals. In mid-sentences, she changes the register of her voice drastically, making it seem like it’s digitally distorted. Along the run of the album, she drops harmonized ‘hmmm’ and ‘oooh’ that add personality to each song. She proves why critics call her a fairy as she shows the ethereal in her voice.
Surreal visuals
Because Caroline Polachek is a well-rounded artist, she also likes to make sure that her music doesn’t just sound good but also looks good. She’s highly involved with the creative direction of her album too, visually. With the help of photographer and artist, Aidan Zamiri, she was able to form visually evocative artwork covers for her singles and the album itself. In these imageries, she is lithe and pretty, disciplined and orderly but provocative and messy at times as well.
In the album cover artwork, as a nod to desire’s transformational power, she is displayed crawling inside a rail transit, lunging forward with a ravenous look in her eyes. On one end of the transit are bystanders minding their own business in a mundane world, on the other end, sand—a mirage of paradise. She is crawling towards her own illusions.
Even in music videos, the visual direction is immersive and surreal. In Welcome To My Island, she spews lava, resembling an erupting volcano. Packed with different settings, it also features Caroline singing underwater and depicted as a statue. In Billions, she collects grapes and vials, looking like a fairy. These imageries are all so indicative of the album’s chaotic but sonically ethereal identity.
The other artwork cover for her singles also feature luscious visuals in different ethereal settings. For Bunny Is A Rider, her glaring eyes are reflected in the rear view mirror. For Billions, she is a topless goddess holding a cornucopia. In Sunset, she is a gypsy holding paper and string-covered bottles. In Welcome To My Island, her bare back is with tattoo-shaped sunburns.
