Caroline Polachek, caught in her web

On January 31, the American Caroline Polachek (New York, 1985) posted a video on Twitter in which she was seen and heard reciting the titles of the 11 songs that make up her second album, Desire, I Want to, with a gentle cadence

(Perpetual Novice).

The next day, British Charli XCX, with whom Polachek has collaborated in the past and whom he has become close friends with — even though Charli sounds like a party for fashion magazine stylists in Magaluf, and Polachek like a hen party suffragette in the Zürich del Cabaret Voltaire—, he replied on that same social network: “Caroline, I love you for these things.

You have a song called

(“Sketch of an angel”) and I have another one called

.

“Desire, I Want To Turn Into You”, out on Valentine's Day pic.twitter.com/75fdrEwc35

— Caroline Polachek (@carolineplz) January 31, 2023

This interaction sums up quite accurately the nature of Polachek's new work, which without abandoning the path begun in

four years ago, which positioned her as the only true heir to Kate Bush —not so much for imitating the English as for possessing a speech of similar idiosyncrasy—, adds to all that poetic, figurative and sometimes abstruse charge of his work a new and surprising element: his sense of humor.

On the other side of the screen, the New Yorker tries to explain the complicated process by which her new album, released this week, contains what Pitchfork magazine

as the best song of 2021, the already distant

.

“It has been a difficult road.

I had to leave London due to problems with my visa and then I saw that in Barcelona, ​​after the pandemic, things were reopening.

I remembered that Arca [the Venezuelan experimental artist] had recommended a studio there that was very good.

And I went there two weeks.

The city gave me that light that it has, which makes it seem as if time has been sustained.

But also open bars, artists and those parties in which the music goes to a lot of bpm and ends very late, ”she recalls regarding the time in which this album began to take shape.

"I feel that my job is never to draw a picture of the world, but only of my world", he intervenes in order to clarify that, although the process has been long and transoceanic, the idea has never been to leave the body and soul of the artist herself.

“They are feelings.

It is sensuality, which is the antidote to logic, to becoming a number, to being typecast.

It is something magical that is with us all the time and keeps us alive.

This album is based on sensuality and depends on it to exist.

I design roller coasters, that's my music.

That roller coaster and its course are in my head.

Until that trip is over, the song is not there, nothing is there”.

“I will never become a star like Dua Lipa, because I refuse to leave the control console.

I supervise everything"

In this attraction that is his new album there is calypso, tropicalism, abstract pop, martial rhythms and medieval airs.

But above all there are volcanoes and stalactites, quicksand and a fascinating exercise in converting globalism into quasi-geologism.

This album is an earth sign.

But fly.

Sometimes immediately rewarding.

Others, a challenge.

“Really, a challenge?

I believe more in challenging from the stage than from the songs.

For example, on stage I don't smile, because it annoys me that women are always asked to do so.

And sometimes I take eternal breaks between songs, which is quite awkward.

I am no longer so interested in giving an overloaded image;

now the challenge is to give little.

I feel like clothes create a wall.

That what makes the female body erotic is just what makes it less human,

and I'm more interested in being human,” says Polachek, the daughter of a renowned New York academic expert in Asian studies who always thought her daughter's artistic ambitions were a bit too mundane.

“She As a teenager she was in five choirs and two metal bands.

She was obsessed with Deftones until I discovered Sigur Rós”, she recalls.

"Being a teenager is being an animal in captivity."

Polachek broke into the world of pop in 2007 leading the band Chairlift.

The following year, his song

was chosen by Apple as the theme song for an advertisement for one of the latest versions of the iPod.

A decade later, the band dissolved.

By then, the New Yorker had already threatened a solo career under the alias Ramona Lisa, while she signed a song for Beyoncé (

, in 2013).

Two years later, she released

, the album that would catapult her to success, while she collaborated with Christine and the Queens or Charli XCX (

).

After the pandemic, Dua Lipa called her to open for some dates on her world tour, which she had to leave in September last year after breaking her ankle.

“No one warns you that in a large venue the sound comes back to you like two seconds later, and since I am a singer who sings softly and has a very loud mic, the return that came to me was terrible.

Then, of course, you get used to it and after a few weeks neither I nor my band were aware of it.

Then there's filling those huge stages.

The key?

Do cardio.

You have to be in shape, be an athlete”.

Going from performing in medium-capacity clubs to venues for more than 20,000 people helped him get on stage at festivals like Primavera Sound or Coachella.

But from that time with Dua Lipa she also understood that she was unlikely to become a pop star like the British-born Kosovar.

“To achieve that you have to work fast and do a lot.

You must expand your team.

I admire Dua Lipa because she is a very good communicator and a great leader.

He's great at creating a positive environment where everyone feels good.

He knows how to share his vision”, says Polachek.

"But I'm a

, a

total.

There are parts of what I do that I will never be able to delegate to anyone, which is why my work takes a long time to finish and demands a lot from me.

That's why I will never reach that level of a pop star, because I refuse to leave the control console, "says the singer.

“I have to edit my videos and my photos and supervise the remixes and participate in the covers.

It's not that I'm afraid of giving up space, it's that I like to do all that and I don't want to miss it.

It gives me happiness.

I would never sacrifice being behind the camera to spend more time in front of it."

Desire, I Want to Turn Into You.

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