Caroline Polachek describes music as “a way of being at home.” Working on songs, she says, becomes akin to constructing a room in a house. One can envision the placement of doors and windows, the flow of light and sound. It’s unsurprising, then, that there’s a distinct architectural quality to her musical process.
Polachek pulls inspiration from across time and space – aesthetically, thematically and sonically. Her reverence for ancient mythological tales is apparent across her catalog of work. In the music video for her breakout solo hit ‘So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings,’ a tightly produced, ‘80s inspired pop anthem, for example, she plays Persephone, trapped in the underworld. And in ‘Bunny is a Rider,’ a sizzling cut that undulates over a heavy funk bassline, she fights off a fearsome minotaur in a deep labyrinth. This capacity to fuse past, present, and future is what makes Polachek such an exciting and singular artist.
Her latest project, “Desire, I Want To Turn Into You” was released on Valentine’s Day of this year and cemented her status as pop music’s “indie darling.” By all accounts, the creation of this latest album was no small feat. Recorded in stolen moments as Polachek toured the globe, it was revised over a hundred times before its release – and the effort is evident.
“Desire…” is a rich tapestry depicting Polachek’s fantastical odyssey into sensation itself. It is dense and intricate without feeling overwhelming; it’s eclectic and varied without feeling inconsistent. This sublime shape-shifting quality is what makes the record so exciting. Polachek deftly traverses genres. She dances through the tracks: from trance to trip-hop, from new wave to flamenco – there’s even a bagpipe solo thrown into the mix. In isolation, each song belongs to its own sonic universe, but when consumed all at once, everything clicks into place.
Such a deep-dive into the human condition isn’t necessarily new territory for the artist. Her solo breakthrough came in 2019 with the critically acclaimed “Pang.” This debut was a sweeping, atmospheric showcase that consistently centered around Polachek’s undeniable vocal skills. There was a sense of immediacy in the project’s tight production that perfectly captured the adrenaline surge of the onomatopoeic title. The album unpacked ideas connected to that feeling: pangs of hunger, guilt, nostalgia.
Now, with an enhanced sense of hot-blooded urgency, Polachek turns her scrupulous eye to an exploration of desire. But how does one capture its full breadth and depth of meaning? For such an instinctual sensation, words often feel insufficient. Sometimes you just need to howl at the moon. Which is exactly how Polachek opens the album with ‘Welcome to My Island’ – a melodic, prolonged cry that is part-siren-call, part-banshee-shriek.
This single cry conveys a symphony of emotion: there’s loneliness and desperation, but also a sense of unbridled exhilaration. This animalism is reflected in the album art, which has Polachek crawling across a grimy subway floor on all-fours. She’s moving beneath the busy, metropolitan rat-race above her, submitting to a more carnal drive within. It’s a genius contrast that gets to the heart of the project – an exploration of what happens when you submit to your desires.
Later on the opening track, Polachek anthemically delivers the album’s title – “Desire,” she cries, “I wanna turn into you.” It’s a powerful call, infused with a not-so-subtle hint of mania. One interpretation here is that Polachek actually wants to turn into the disembodied force of desire itself. While it’s an abstract concept, one can certainly see the appeal. Desire is energy, undeniably, possessing a ceaseless ability to regenerate itself. It might not always yield the results you want, but it certainly makes you feel alive along the way.
Another interpretation of Polachek’s titular declaration is wanting to turn into the object of your desire. This might be a familiar feeling to anyone with a crush that borders on obsession, and it certainly is for this artist. “Wanting to see through their eyes, wanting to live through their memories in addition to your own, … wanting to fuse with them,” she says, talking of desire in an interview with Vera on Track.
Such frenzied yearning now feels like a pervasive part of contemporary pop-culture, but it has its roots as far back as Greek mythology. Humans were supposedly first created as four-armed, four-legged, two-faced creatures, but after being violently split in two by Zeus – the Olympian god of thunder – humankind was condemned to a lifetime of searching for one’s other half.
It follows then that (re)connection with your “other half” lends itself to a (re)melding of selves. In this other person, you have found your supposed soulmate. Whether or not you subscribe to the notion that someone else was ‘made’ for you, there’s something undeniably intoxicating in the preordained nature of it all.
Curiously though, the electric lead-single from the album, “Bunny Is a Rider,” feels almost like a disavowal of desire for another. “Bunny” is an ode to being off-the-grid, on the run. The track moves unconventionally. The heavy bassline remains almost constant throughout, and the wonderfully surreal lyrics defy any concrete interpretation. What’s so beguiling about it all is how easy it is to get lost in Polachek’s world – to go along for the ride because it’s just too intoxicating not to.
But where “Bunny” depicts the desire for one’s own autonomy, most other tracks on the album contextualize desire in that seemingly vast space before acquisition. Heavy with longing, it can feel lonely and exhilarating at the same time. This gives a dynamic feel to the project – desire as longing suspended in perpetual motion.”Fly to You,” featuring Grimes and Dido, captures this most fervently. Enveloped in rolling drums and shining synths, you might just feel as though you’re gliding above the clouds. The layered vocals at the end of the track are ascendent, evoking the swell of emotion one might feel when en route to their lover: “closer and closer to you baby / I’m dying to find you.”
Other tracks find Polachek firmly rooted in the enrapturing presence of another: “look how I forget who I was / before I was the way I am with you,” Polachek professes on “Blood and Butter.” Her melodies here spiral out in every direction. Propelling us upwards and outwards, the singer highlights the ever-expansive energy of desire.
“Desire…” is so internally expansive that certain elements resurface across the tracklist like echoes reverberating around a deep cavern. You can hear a distorted version of the whistled melody from “Bunny is a Rider” in “I Believe”. The bratty refrain from “Pretty in Possible” (“How does it feel / Being so rich?”) is regenerated at the end of “Smoke” in dramatic fashion, now twisted and desperate. Polachek herself has described the album as a “puzzlebox.” New details reveal themselves with each listen, giving the project an interactive feeling and compelling the listener to return to it time and time again.Last week, Polachek concluded her US tour at Radio City Music Hall here in New York City. Rising-star Ethel Cain opened the sold-out show, and with extravagant set design and pitch-perfect vocals, those lucky enough to grab tickets were transported deep into Polachek’s fantastical world.