Caroline Polachek: Desire, I Want To Turn Into You
Week 28
THE PITCH
I’ve been really into alternative, sort of left-of-centre pop music for ages now and this album fits right into that! When thinking about what I love about this album and also why I thought it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on it, two things really stuck out: Caroline Polachek’s vocals and her writing. As someone who doesn’t enjoy music, I’m so excited to hear what you think about her singing. Probably the thing she is most known for is her WAILING. Lots of the songs on this album incorporate really long, really high notes that sort of border on screaming. It’ll probably be like Marmite and either you’ll find it strange and intriguing or absolutely be turned off by it!
As far as her writing goes, this is something else where I’m not sure which way you’ll feel about it! At first, I thought as a writer you would definitely enjoy this aspect of the album. Caroline has a very artsy-fartsy and poetic songwriting style. I wonder though if sometimes this might get a bit pretentious for you! Admittedly some of the songs on the album I don’t find myself casually listening to – they’re too strange and require your whole attention and aren’t something you casually put on a playlist. But then, as someone who doesn’t like to have music on in the background while you’re doing other stuff maybe that won’t be a problem?
Something I think you should definitely look out for are the little ‘doors’ linking the different songs on the album. There are different lyric fragments, sounds and melodies that are shared and repeated though different songs. Since I first noticed this I’ve thought it was really interesting, but I’ve never quite been able to decide WHY these happen and what message is being conveyed by them. I’d love to hear what doors you pick up on and your thoughts on why they’re included.
Hope you don’t hate it, and looking forward to hearing your opinions!
Iwan Demmery
MY RESPONSE
I hardly know where to start with this, Iwan. Do I like it? Yes, I do. But what exactly do I like about it? That’s hard to pin down.
There’s her voice, of course. Caroline Polacheck uses her voice like an instrument and it totally works for me. I feel ‘wailing’ is a bit unfair, but she definitely verges on the operatic at times. And the music – from almost a power ballad vibe to passages that sound like soaring holy music. Variety is my favourite! And there is everything here, from bagpipes and a children’s choir to Latin rhythms that brought me right back to last week’s Rodrigo y Gabriela.
And the lyrics… This is an album you need to listen to with all prosaic, logical sense-seeking switched off. It’s about feelings and ideas and mood.
Look:
‘I’m wearing black to mourn the sudden loss of innocence/And that’s alright because it hides the dirt and hides the wine.’
‘There you were/With your mirror/Shining the world over me/There I was/With my butterfly net/Trying to catch your light’
Little snatches of meaning coalesce now and then but mostly – unless I’m being really thick here – it’s about the joy of stringing together words and images and mixing up references to culture and religion and mythology.
Take Blood and Butter for example. Just putting those two words together makes me think first of all of bread and butter – something basic – but blood goes with body – religious connotations – and from that you get to bread and wine. So now in your head just with those two words there are ideas about religion and food and bodies.
Or what about Bunny is a Rider? There’s a line there: ‘Tryna go ask Alice/Tryna catch that rabbit’. Well Alice and rabbit are obvious references to Alice in Wonderland but Go Ask Alice is also the title of a famous novel about teenage drug addiction. To be honest this whole album is deeply Alice in Wonderland, the mixed-up interconnectedness of dreams.
Oh, and I have a theory that the first song, Welcome to My Island, might be about Circe, who trapped Odysseus and his crew on her island so she could seduce him and transformed all his crew into pigs. Listen to it – what do you think? The Odyssey crops up again In Pretty In Possible when she sings, ‘Oracle and Odyssey with the bloody nose’ – who knows what this means but it made me think of The Zombies!
The ‘doors’ you mention? I’m going to have to listen harder. I see volcanoes repeated. Someone called Eliza crops up a couple of times. Eliza Doolittle (transformation) or a real person? Love is violent. There’s a repeated theme about bodies that seems to be talking about body dysmorphia: ‘I wear my body like an uninvited guest’; ‘How does it feel to know your final form?’ (This is quite Alice in Wonderland too).
But just look at all these lovely words and word combinations:
Hopedrunk Everasking
Cornucopeic
Wikipediated
Pretty In Possible
How could you not love that?
WHAT ELSE I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO THIS WEEK
Blondie Parallel Lines
Paul Weller Stanley Road
Kate Bush Hounds of Love
The National Sleep Well Beast
Yo La Tengo Old Joy
The Wombats A Guide to Love Loss and Desperation
Violent Femmes Violent Femmes