Desire can be volatile, torturous, wonderful and cruel – but above all, it keeps us going. We I want and I want and I want until we die, these small hopes prompt us through the vast expanse of our lives. Caroline Polachek – pop writer, sentimental philosopher, hopeless romantic – makes a muse of this confused, pervasive force on her virtuoso new album, Desire, I want to turn into you. He knows very well that falling in love fills you with possibilities, makes a boring world beautiful for a while. And so, in a nod to the transformative power of desire, her album cover features her on all fours in the grimy subway, stalking forward with a ravenous look in her eyes. At one end of the car is the rat race. at the other end, sand — a mirage of paradise.
Polachek spent much of her career as one half of the indie-pop band Chairlift in crazy, formative New York City and more recently split her time between Los Angeles and London. In 2020, she retired to Mediterranean romances – belting out '70s and '80s Italo-pop from a beat-up station wagon with her boyfriend in Rome and living at the base of Mount Etna in Sicily, admiring the “impersonal, tectonic , chaotic energy coming from below.” Inspired by these excursions, the album takes us to breathtaking places, all palm trees and crystal clear waters, crimson sunsets and smoky volcanoes. In the ecstatic “Welcome to My Island,” Polachek is Calypso greeting a shipwrecked Odysseus, beckoning us to her oasis. It channels a longing as deep blue as the ocean and howls like a wolf at the moon.
While Polachek was constantly on her album in 2019 Acute—parachuting down, going from door to door—Wish it is grounded in a more real sense of place. Even in songs with little location detail, you can feel the atmosphere: An elusive woman lives a fantasy escape in “Bunny Is a Rider,” not checking her email because she's “AWOL on Thursday.” The satellites can't find her because she's somewhere in the jungle: Hear the murky, tropical bass, the faint chirping of a bird, the static that sounds like the rustling of leaves. “Crude Drawing of an Angel” is set below the surface of the Earth, among dripping stalactites, with jagged breaths trailing behind. Polacek's voice cuts through the dark atmosphere like a blade: “Leave me/Here on the ground/All or nothing,” he pleads, begging for mercy from a lover he knows will disappear.
from our partners at https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/caroline-polachek-desire-i-want-to-turn-into-you/
