Caroline Polachek - The Law of Desire

The roads to success are endless, but in the world of pop they can also be particularly winding. Caroline Elizabeth Polachek, the New York singer-songwriter born in 1985, knows something about that. Nothing suggested the explosion of stardom that swept her up in 2023. Certainly not her honorable indie service at the helm of Chairlift, nor the more or less improbable disguises under the monikers Ramona Lisa and CEP, nor even her brilliant debut as herself (Pang, 2019). It took the infamous sophomore album — a word borrowed from American school slang to denote a musician's second record — namely the torrential Desire, I Want To Turn Into You (2023), which actually condenses everything Caroline has been — and hasn’t been — over her nearly two-decade career, but which to many felt like a debut. Because by forcefully shattering the now-slim membrane separating indie and mainstream, Ms. Polachek confused just about everyone, including those who, mindful of her underground roots, were thrown off seeing her reign as a brand-new popstar on the glossy covers of magazines worldwide. The fact remains that few other occasions can match such a thunderous, delayed-fuse explosion. One's mind even drifts back to the magical 1983 of Cyndi Lauper, then thirty, fresh off a grueling apprenticeship among cover bands and rock groups. But Caroline Polachek is 38. And everything suggests she is only at the start of a (new) career that — unlike that of the girl who just wanted to have fun — could even keep climbing. Time will tell, but in the meantime one cannot help but be astonished by the ease with which the former Chairlift frontgirl commands major live stages and TV appearances too (for instance, Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show), showing off an unmatched stage presence, technical mastery and vocal range.

But let's rewind the tape and start again from the beginning of the story: June 20, 1985.

Ind(i)ependence days

Caroline Elizabeth was born in New York, to James Montel Polachek, a market analyst and classically trained musician, and Elizabeth Allan. At just one year old, however, she moved with her family to Tokyo, Japan, where she would stay until the age of 6. An experience that would somehow also shape her artistic career: she has recounted how her first contact with traditional Japanese songs and anime themes had a major influence on her musical education. She later settled in Greenwich, Connecticut, where she began singing in her third-grade choir. She also nurtured her musical passion at home, playing a Yamaha keyboard given to her by her father — according to the uncharitable, to stop her from doing too much damage to the piano. During that period, which would culminate badly with her parents' divorce in 1994, Caroline describes herself as “a very hyperactive little girl,” to the point that her mother and father, separated in their respective homes, tried to calm her down by playing her Enya records (!).

As a teenager, she began traveling around the States hunting for music, especially frequenting New York, where she attended concerts spanning the most varied genres: emo, post-hardcore, punk and jazz. Legend has it that Mike Patton of Faith No More once personally escorted her into a show at the Knitting Factory after her (fake) ID had been rejected. Meanwhile, Caroline played in a couple of bands in high school and college. It was the prelude to the birth of her first real musical venture.

Together with her friend Aaron Pfenning, in 2005 Caroline Polachek formed Chairlift, a synth-pop outfit based in Boulder, Colorado. After a couple of years paying their dues, the band moved to Brooklyn, where they brought in a third member, multi-instrumentalist Patrick Wimberly.

Chairlift's debut album, Does You Inspire You (2008), came out on the little-known indie label Kanine Records and is a clever reworking of wave-pop streaked with electronic intrusions, marked by colorful originality. A fluid record, composed with sharp instincts and full command of its tools. The interplay between the two male and female voices (Pfenning and Polachek), along with a pronounced use of electronics and effects-laden guitar, are further elements enriching eleven tracks that never repeat themselves. The songs' constant shifts in mood throw the listener onto a relentless carousel, unable to pause even for a moment.

Spirals of acid-tinged pop ooze tension and allure (the pulsing, almost funky incipit of “Garbage,” the tormented “Earwig Town”), fragile litanies recited with cool detachment lend the minutes an ethnic touch (“Planet Health,” which seems to spring straight out of Japan's “Gentlemen Take Polaroids”; the vibrant ambient-pop of “Somewhere Around Here”). The grace of immaculate pop gems reaches peaks of pure excellence (the startling beauty of “Bruises,” the irresistible ups and downs of “Make Your Mind Up”), and in the moments where electronics take center stage, the structure holds up admirably (anxiolytic Soft Cell echoes in “Evident Utensil,” the synthetic whirlpools of “Territory”).

Having played the card of the skeletal, reverb-drenched ballad (“Don’t Give A Damn”), with its closing coda built from an instrumental resting on a trumpet's ectoplasm (“Chameloen Closet”), the perfect farewell arrives. “Ceiling Wax” reconnects with traditions now long lost, ideally linking the submissive breath of Hope Sandoval's delivery with the temptations of Antenne.

Chairlift, in short, lay out a mouth-watering mix: courage, inspiration, nerve and talent. The result is a dish of varied flavors, appetizing and seductive in its own way, its shifting appeal bound to draw in the most disparate of patrons. The hit “Bruises” would even go on to soundtrack an Apple commercial.

But Caroline Polachek's talent soon reveals the need to express itself in other forms too. So in 2008 the New York artist founds the choir Girl Crisis with twelve other female performers, including Au Revoir Simone and Class Actress. The group will arrange and record two covers a year from 2008 to 2013, including songs by Black Sabbath, Nirvana, Leonard Cohen, The Bangles and Ace of Base.

In 2010, meanwhile, Polachek teams up with Jorge Elbrecht of Violens to record a “sgin” (an anagram of sing) of Justin Bieber's “Never Let You Go”, or – as the songwriter herself explains – “an original song written to accompany the silent images of a randomly chosen hit, in this case a Bieber video clip found on YouTube”. That same year she again collaborates with Violens on the duet “Violent Sensation Descends (French Duet Version)”, while in 2011 she will direct the video for another of the band's tracks, “It Couldn’t Be Perceived”, and in 2013 she will once more work alongside Elbrecht on the EP “Gloss Coma 001”.

Retro-fixated in their own way

Meanwhile Chairlift have to deal with Pfenning's departure, who leaves the group in 2010. Now reduced to a duo, Polachek and Wimberly decide to carry on, making the follow-up to their debut, titled Something (2012). While, with the nineties revival looming, lopsided post-punk and Joy Division-style basslines are starting to smell a bit stale, and New York no-wave no longer looks like the non plus ultra of indie hype; right as everyone seems ready to pick up grunge guitars and big eurodance keyboards, Chairlift come knocking with a crate full of Kate Bush, Eurythmics, Talk Talk, Tears For Fears and Naked Eyes LPs: it's the artiest, sunniest kind of synth-pop, in short, that fuels these interlopers disrupting the natural twenty-year cycle of retromania. That handful of artists from the mid-Eighties who had seen in the Fairlight sampler a tool of redemption from dark gloom and scrappiness, the chance to reconcile their generation with the dazzling, polished sound of the sunshine-pop era.

New Yorkers like other “revivalists” of the same kind of kaleidoscopic vitality (Vampire Weekend, MGMT), Chairlift had laid bare, with the tender beauty of Does You Inspire You, a breezy but never sun-drenched approach, a bright but never overflowing style of songwriting. The songs on Something, on the other hand, while just as imaginative, burst forth with gusto, standing tall as perfect pop songs with killer hooks, casting their spell in the most direct way.

Beyond the sheer melodic talent and sonic variety – masterfully alternating different moods and opposing instrumental registers – Caroline Polachek's pure voice finally emerges as the absolute source of these songs' magnetism. Versatile and deeply folk-inflected, it shifts from nightingale (the ecstatic “Turning”) to femme fatale (the irresistible allure of “Take It Out On Me”, “Ghost Tonight” and “I Belong In Your Arms”), from trills to whispers within a single song.

But the real strength seems to lie elsewhere: a shyness never fully hidden, a veil of embarrassment or immaturity that reveals – in perfect keeping with the indie spirit – a fragile, uncertain creature. A slight, luminous fairy, who almost seems to be asking for protection.

The occasional dips in tension dampen the album's passionate tone here and there (the sappy “Cool As Fire”, the uncertain, out-of-place folk-pop of “Frigid Spring”), without undermining the overall quality, which remains high and vibrant. From the bare essentials of the closing notes of “Guilty As Chargee” – an exquisitely crafted, drum-driven triumph – one can already glimpse the duo's immense, unruly, pulsating potential, as they now seem to hold every card needed to make the album that finally breaks them through with critics and audiences alike.

Meanwhile Caroline Polachek takes part in “Everything Is Spoilt By Use” by Ice Choir (the solo project of Kurt Feldman of Pains of Being Pure at Heart), also directing its video, and in the track “Chamakay” by Blood Orange (with whom she will reunite five years later on “Holy Will”). She also allows herself the luxury of becoming a writer and producer for none other than Beyoncé, on the track “No Angel” (featured on the self-titled “Beyoncé” from 2013), which will also earn a Grammy nomination. Then, in 2013, she lends her vocals to “Unhold”, credited to Delorean, the Spanish alternative dance project.

Even more disorienting is her solo venture under the mysterious pseudonym Ramona Lisa. “Ramona is a character that springs from my songs. She belongs to another world”, Polachek will explain. And this idea of pleasurable alienation will be the leitmotif of the whole album Arcadia (2014), a new stop on her restless path of experimentation. “A document of being alone”, in her own words. The New York artist feels the need to work in parallel on something of her own, something intimate. So, in the downtime between stops on the Chairlift tour, she starts writing and recording alone with her computer in the most varied places: airports, hotel closets, dressing rooms, but above all in the rooms of Villa Medici in Rome, where she relocates for a while. She uses no hardware instruments, no microphone, just her laptop.

Released in the United States by Chris Taylor's Terrible Records (the Grizzly Bear bassist) and in Europe by Pannonica, Arcadia is a compendium of what she herself has called “pastoral electronic music”. But one could easily add “lo-fi” to that description too: the recording approach mentioned above has in fact heavily shaped the album's sound, which always feels distant and filtered, even artificial.

The songs on the Ramona Lisa album can be split into two categories: some lean more ambient, also used as interludes and rich in sounds and noise; in others, Polachek's synth-pop background comes through more strongly. The opening track “Arcadia” belongs to the first category, a perfect title track that best sums up the spirit of the album and draws us into the world Polachek has built, starting with its lyrics. The line “Here I ran from the west/ unto ruins where the sun dances with death” seems to refer directly to her temporary stay in Rome.

The most accessible track is certainly “Backwards And Upwards”, which instead winks at melodies and sounds more typically à-la Chairlift. The exotic “Lady’s Got Gills” and “Izzit True What They Tell Me” also belong to the second category, among the album's finest songs, as does the sweet ballad “Dominic”.

Closing out the collection is the ambient "I Love Our World", in which synths, organs and bells intertwine with noises and sounds captured by Polachek on a rooftop during a sunny day. "It's simply about trying to record how I felt in that moment", she explained.

In conclusion, Arcadia is an album that can captivate and charm, yet it also leaves the impression of being a trial run, a game, something Polachek didn't take entirely seriously. Still, it clearly confirms the talent of an artist who, alone or with her band, has all the tools to be one of the finest performers of her kind.

With the Ramona Lisa parenthesis closed, Polachek returns to Chairlift for the New York band's third (and final) album, titled Moth (2016), which — proof of the growing interest around them — comes out on Columbia.

If the previous Something had marked a clean break, sonically, from the debut Does You Inspire You, in favor of a more decisive synth-pop turn, in the same way Moth completely overturns the stylistic and expressive traits of its immediate predecessor, speaking a far more contemporary language that draws, when needed, on heavy doses of r&b and funk. So while these are significant upheavals, they ultimately trace back blindly to a unified creative vision, consistent with itself despite the shifts on display: polymorphism, precisely, of which Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly become the standard-bearers. Despite the changes of costume and scenery, the taste for shape-shifting arrangements, for writing that is both sophisticated and accessible, as well as for intricate, multiform rhythmic patterns, make every piece of the Chairlift puzzle perfectly identifiable and traceable back to its creators' signature — two artists who can boast a truly standout personality in their approach.

R&b and funk, as mentioned, and in generous quantities: it's clear the duo is trying to broaden its palette by drawing on a more contemporary sonic vocabulary, playing with it in a manner not unlike Bilderbuch or LA Priest. Where the former successfully subjected pop-rock to a "black" treatment, and the latter applied its own peculiar take to electro-pop, on Moth the focus is on an arty, sophisticated pop that, while still at times recalling their earlier synthetic work, is already remarkably forward-looking on its own, at a safe distance from any nostalgic comparison. Indeed, the eagerness to highlight that gap was evident from the start, through four singles that in a sense formed the four corners within which to map out the album's carefully sought-after alchemy.

So while "Crying In Public" becomes an opportunity to expand the nu-sophisti-pop of Rhye and Jessie Ware, steering it toward a melancholy lounge-music with a jazzy aftertaste (letting Polachek show off the best of her vocal range), "Ch-Ching" is a potential indie-hit made for compulsive replay, a mixed smoothie whose original ingredients are impossible to trace, topped off with a killer chorus and a thoroughly respectable compositional craft that highlights the finely segmented rhythmic framework and the inventive use of brass, finally freed from easy vintage references. And while the songwriting doesn't always showcase the duo's real potential ("Romeo", for instance, feels more like a botched collage of three songs stitched together), there's so much (good) material on the table sonically that it's easy to overlook that flaw and instead credit the enormous effort put into shaping the sound.

It quickly becomes clear how the two move in the blink of an eye from a clever attempt at probing mainstream territory, naturally readapted to their own vision (the heavy r&b of "Show U Off", decorated with intriguing dance echoes, though its delivery can feel a touch too overwrought at times), to the seductive funky-disco of "Moth To The Flame", a brilliant update of the genre's traits filtered through 2000s house music and a breezy synthetic allure. Not to mention how the genius of a Green Gartside, differences duly noted, could soon be reborn in the Chairlift experience: the aforementioned "Polymorphing", in interlocking dub cadences, sophisti-pop sinuousness and dreamy-tinged shadings, would have little trouble serving as the launchpad for reviving, on a larger scale, the complexity of a sound that found its central hub on "Songs To Remember".

But just as they'd fully set out on the road toward a possible masterpiece, Caroline Polachek and Patrick Wimberly decide to part ways, following one final tour in the spring of 2017, each from then on focusing on their own personal projects — she as a solo artist, he as a producer for other artists. Chairlift will always remain an indefinable midpoint between a cult indie band and a promise unfulfilled. But above all they will be the solid platform from which Caroline Polachek takes flight, transforming from a shy indie fairy into a shrewd pop star.

The metamorphoses of CEP

As we've seen, Chairlift had indeed already begun to feel too small for Caroline Polachek, who had already shown a desire to test herself on other fronts. Not yet ready to put her own name on it, though, the New York artist hides behind the moniker CEP (the initials of her full name, Caroline Elizabeth Polachek) for what is, in effect, her second solo album, following the Ramona Lisa experience. Anyone expecting a new development of her idea of shape-shifting, idiosyncratic pop will have to wait, however: the collection of 18 self-produced sketches that make up Drawing The Target Around The Arrow (2017) is in fact the most unexpected detour yet — a total break from the (admittedly loosely defined) framework within which the New York musician's art had until then been contained. Made up of tracks composed over the preceding five years, the album is a collection of spare instrumental pieces built using synthetic sine waves and little else, a work of ambient allure and extreme rigor, where even just a hint of melody is a luxury not to be squandered. Regardless of the overall result, the intent is certainly admirable.

Described by her as an auditory break from whatever she happened to be working on at that specific moment, the compositions are devoted to an extreme expressive minimalism, where silence counts as much as sound and where the very idea of progression nearly disappears, giving way to a timbral repetition that is the true constant across the record's various tracks. The extreme neutrality — which Polachek frames as total functionality (it's no coincidence that the chosen titles refer to rather generic concepts, entirely interchangeable with one another) — erases any trace of personal imprinting. The erasure of her own artistic ego, however significant, not to say restful, for someone like Polachek who certainly has no trouble pointing out what is the fruit of her own creativity, ultimately turns out to be the collection's greatest limitation as well. The tracks drift by anonymously, in a succession of more or less subliminal suggestions, lacking any truly substantial impulse, relying solely on the fact of their existing.

Sincerity of intent aside, a touch more care in varying the sine waves on offer would certainly have benefited the project, without losing sight of the retreat of the creative mind, while also ensuring greater listenability. Granted, the hour-long runtime does provide an ambient-drone backdrop that's not entirely without merit, yet there are precious few moments where, beyond a muted background rumble or the occasional livelier pulse with brighter frequencies, something more interesting actually emerges.

For all its repetitiveness, "Singalong" offers a pleasant micro-melodic pattern that sounds like it was written for a vibraphone, "Missed Exit" sounds almost like a field recording captured somewhere out in a forest, and the structure of "1pmWater" brings Polachek's efforts close to the sacral unfolding of Joanna Brouk's compositions. These are rare episodes, though, occasional compositional concessions that prove the rule, one devoted to exposing drones stripped of any further superstructure — a mere decompression exercise away from the elaborate vocal and production harmonies of one of American pop's most distinctive voices.

It won't remain her most memorable or significant effort, but out of sheer curiosity alone, the instrumental collection released under the CEP name is worth a listen.

On October 18, 2019, the first album under the name Caroline Polachek arrives, Pang. More than a starting point (or a fresh start, if you prefer), it's a first milestone, an important statement of intent for a musician with nearly 15 years of career behind her. Almost as if the long and fruitful experience with Chairlift and the solo outings as Ramona Lisa and CEP were the necessary steps toward a platform that was truly her own, with her first album under her own name Caroline Polachek arrives at an entirely personal dimension, an eccentric pop diary where all the different directions explored across her various projects converge, building songs suspended between the boldest contemporaneity and a timeless aura, bittersweet yet suddenly seized by a strange energy that reverberates as much in the handling of sonic space as in the performances, among the most intense and focused of her entire body of work. An arrival point, yes, but one that already makes clear its own otherness compared to everything that came before.

If it's easy enough to spot the synthetic sophistication that had gradually seeped into her main band, Polachek nonetheless opts here for a broader range of solutions and approaches, one that allows for the flourishing of an aesthetic often trapped in the clichés of a sometimes too-sterile refinement. Not that everything runs smoothly here: at times the excesses that had weakened previous efforts return, albeit muted, to present their bill. Yet never as much as this time does the musician reach that long-hoped-for balance, one previously never truly grasped. With production handled alongside fellow PC Music affiliate Danny L Harle (here kept in check in his irreverent games) and a songwriting sense able to show its competence across different registers, the record flows both sinuous and effervescent at once.

It's a whirlwind of sensations that the artist unpacks with studied eclecticism, an expressive essay that shifts from baroque singing to r&b phrasing, passing through shrewd digitizations (the brazen use of autotune in the impossible vocal runs of "Ocean Of Tears") and more abstract passages, with which she crystallizes a distinctive emotional shade.

Far more than with so many other albums praised for their versatility, this was laid bare right from the (many) tracks released ahead of the record, each carefully treading the thin ridges that separate euphoria from despair, reticence from desire. "Door" served excellently as the trailblazer, translating into a track with polished ambient-pop contours, softened by a melody that moves through territory dear to Imogen Heap, before giving way to a closing section where she can freely display her vocal virtuosity, without breaking the heartfelt, autumnal touch of the progression. While "Insomnia" delves further into Polachek's more atmospheric, emotional side, prey to her instincts following a romantic disappointment, elsewhere the tone turns livelier, sharper, shamelessly engaging. Such is the case with "So Hot You're My Feelings", which revives the 80s of Fleetwood Mac with a pen of killer clarity (the amusing supporting vocal flourishes are especially effective), but also with the rarefied urban-pop of "Hit Me Where It Hurts", in which the codes of 90s piano-based singer-songwriting seep into the fabric of contemporary r&b, delivered with unflinching composure.

Even with a few stumbles along the way (a "New Normal" too brief to convince in its bubblegum-Americana hybrid; a "Hey Big Eyes" undecided whether to follow the neo-baroque modulations of its harpsichord-synth or the more hip-hop attitude of its second half), the layered musical universe devised by the musician seduces and captivates, also introducing an authorial vein that had often remained too muted (the airy folktronica of "Look At Me Now", a sort of preemptive letter about a hypothetical near future).

What's still missing is that extra bit of polish for Caroline Polachek's personality to come through without distraction, but even so, the path taken is the right one, allowing the artist's grandeur to develop and shine fully. Between urgency and reluctance, it's an eloquent ode to emotion, beyond all logic and reason.

A star is born

Meanwhile Polachek continues her string of collaborations, this time alongside Christine and the Queens on "La vita nuova" (in Italian) and Charli XCX on "New Shapes" (again together with Christine and the Queens), the second single from her studio album "Crash". Also boosting her newfound popularity is her role as opening act on Dua Lipa's "Future Nostalgia Tour", which began on February 9, 2022. An experience she would describe as follows: "It was interesting because I wasn't playing for my audience, but for hers. It was a great opportunity to learn. For instance, one thing I realized is that I would never want her level of fame; I don't want to live constantly with bodyguards and photographers always on top of you. I'd hate it. Seeing that life up close made me understand how important it is to protect your own privacy", she would reveal to Rolling Stone, confiding at the same time an unsuspected passion for Matia Bazar, and in particular for their hit "Ti sento", discovered during her Roman holidays (to stay on theme): "The singer's vocal performance gives the feeling that her eyes are about to pop out of her skull: it's extremely intense, as if she were electrified. That song became for me a kind of beacon pointing to where I wanted to go and what I wanted to achieve". A bond with Italy that began with her residency at Villa Medici in 2012, which gave a boost to her solo career, further fueled in 2022 by the operatic piece "Last Days: Non voglio mai vedere il sole tramontare", sung in Italian for the soundtrack of the musical of the same name dedicated to Kurt Cobain, and cemented by the double performance — dj set and live show — on November 2 and 3, 2023 at the C2C Festival in Turin, sealing the worldwide breakthrough of her golden year. Because what, deep down, everyone had always suspected — that Caroline Polachek had the makings of a global pop superstar — suddenly bursts into view, tumultuously, with her second album under her own name. One that marks a definitive turning point in her career, while at the same time crowning a path that only seems schizophrenic on the surface, but is in fact consciously coherent: "With Ramona Lisa I worked on the more theatrical side, on choreography and set design; with CEP I had the chance to explore sonic minimalism, while with Chairlift it was the more acoustic universe — Caroline would go on to tell Rolling Stone — All these experiences made me understand what interests me in my own music: creating dreamy electronic pop music concerned with the idea of beauty".

The idea takes shape in Desire, I Want To Turn Into You (2023), an explosive twelve-track exploration of desire and escape that marks the definitive closing of the circle for the New York art-pop composer. Reconciling the ambitions of a sophisticated popstar with a past as a baroque performer, her hyperpop associations, and pastoral abstractions out of a contemporary Arcadia was no easy task. It's therefore almost paradoxical, in its own way, that all these souls not only fail to tone each other down, but in their open conflict end up producing the New York artist's most fully realized project. An explosive concept album about desire and its violent power of escape, Desire, I Want To Turn Into You is a record whose center of gravity is constantly shifting, a pop work that honors its own irregular, wandering nature, chasing the force of instinct track after track. Among the thousand ways to lose oneself behind a dream, the mirages presented here are among the most convincing.

With a rapt gaze, with the same hunger immortalized right on the cover, Polachek tackles the concept from the most disparate angles, focusing each time on one decisive aspect. The result is an imaginative production (handled, with rare exceptions, with Danny L Harle alone), tied to arrangement choices that often marry acoustic and electronic with all the ease of the best folktronica artists.

With a high note that breaks any hesitation, "Welcome To My Island" raises the curtain on the whole adventure, a freestyle number on the level of Exposé/Miami Sound Machine that arches over the musician's deep vocal rises and falls, reworking its synthetic structures between shrewd pc-music-flavored contributions and curious rap inserts. Caught in the firm will to ride desire, Polachek wants to become it, to escape corporeality and the sense of necessity that this inevitably entails. So much so that even the awareness of being crushed, of proving unfit to be part of it, doesn't hold her back from the attempt. In a tribute to Frou Frou and their lasting influence on electropop and beyond, "Pretty In Possible" outlines their elegant downtempo/indietronic structures in a journey between orchestral pads and Bristol-style restarts, just barely tinged with electro echoes.

The influence of Heap and Sigsworth's creation doesn't end there: sure, it doesn't surface in the far more scattered arty phrasing of "Bunny Is A Rider" (all bubbling r&b basslines and bouncing tropical structures) or in the flamenco-tinged gait of "Sunset", one of the most pounding melodic hooks of the year. But go a little further, and you run into the subtle garage streaks of "I Believe", dedicated to the late SOPHIE, or plunge into the trance-like swirl of "Fly To You" (where she's accompanied by the voices of Grimes and Dido, far too subdued overall), so lucid and ethereal it seems made of glass — and there you recognize the imprint of a duo that found a syncretic approach to pop material.

Not that Polachek doesn't bring her own touch; after all, she has every bit of awareness needed to avoid trite literalism. Take "Blood And Butter", the perfect portrait of unreserved infatuation, a nocturnal, feral electro track capable of turning on a dime and catching a bagpipe swell somewhere between the Kate Bush of "The Sensual World" and the Milla Jovovich of "The Divine Comedy". And what to make of a romance about immortality, inspired by Natalie Babbitt's classic, able to turn into an ambient-pop confession just barely polished up with electroacoustic distortions?

Elusive yet always present, able to turn into smoke and suddenly regain her physical form, Caroline Polachek is matter in constant flux, the torment of a will that turns into deep unease, into a longing never fully satisfied. Closing out a finely tuned record, "Billions" sums up the many faces of desire while avoiding easy clarification, instead weaving free-flowing imagery together with the feeling of a closeness turning euphoric, trembling. Full of the mystery of uncertainty, proudly displaying a vocal range that also explores its darkest sides, the song is the most complete synthesis of a style able to fit the most disparate suggestions together (baroque madrigal, spoken word and childlike choral singing, the new-age influences of the tabla and the odd glitch flourishes layered on top) into a whole that's never linear, yet always appetizing, never quite satisfying expectations.

From Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, no fewer than six singles are pulled: five preceding its release — "Bunny Is A Rider", "Billions", "Sunset", "Welcome To My Island" — and one following it, "Blood And Butter". Not satisfied with that, its author concocts one more, outside the tracklist, titled "Dang", released on her own label Perpetual Notice. Produced by Polachek herself together with Cecile Believe and Danny L Harle, it's an engaging avant-pop number, sophisticated and catchy at once. The New York artist will present it on the stage of Stephen Colbert's Late Show, in a curious performance in which she plays a professor in front of a video showing slides. TV appearances become ever more frequent for Caroline, who is also welcomed into the hallowed halls of Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show, where she bewitches viewers with a rousing performance of "Welcome To My Island".

Desire, I Want To Turn Into You will earn widespread acclaim from both audiences and critics, charting in several countries (Belgium, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States) and landing a Grammy nomination in the Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical category. It will feature in nearly every major international outlet's year-end best-album list, cementing its author's reputation as one of the brightest stars of 2020s pop: a versatile popstar, overflowing with talent and personality. All this with a nonconformist approach, both arty and punk, particularly suited to the times. For Caroline Polachek, her career seems to have started over again at 38. And the best could be just beginning. "Next is more is my philosophy", as she herself puts it. So much for retromania.

Contributions by Alessandro Biancalana (Chairlift – "Does You Inspire You", "Something"), Marco Sgrignoli (Chairlift – "Something"), Cosimo Cirillo (Ramona Lisa – "Arcadia")

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