Desire, I Want to Turn Into You by Caroline Polachek [Album Review]
[I wrote this review a few months ago for the more private blog. But I think it is a good one to start the present blog. Since writing it I’ve seen Caroline Polachek live, touring this album. The concert was excellent. I also really enjoyed the opening act: George Clanton. But that’s for another day. Enjoy the review.]
I came into this one with an already positively valenced attitude. I’m a fan of Caroline Polachek’s work, from Chairlift to present. She has been able to top two of my recent “favorite singles of the year” lists (2019 with “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” and last year with “Billions” which is featured on the present project). I’m predisposed to like this one, so, as always, take what I say with healthy skepticism.
This album is a follow-up to Polachek’s debut (at least, under her own name): Pang. Pang was a fun, yet intricate, display of avant-pop. Desire… is in the same vein, but an improvement. In the intervening few years, Polachek as been busy amassing both mainstream dance-pop cred (supporting Dua Lipa on tour) and experimental cred from the hyperpop/PC Music scene (making music with Charli XCX, Christine and the Queens, Flume, and Desire…’s primary producer Danny L Harle). Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, as a refinement of the sound introduced on Pang and on the tail end of this period of establishment, really feels like the birth of a clarified and mature period for Caroline Polachek.
As Polachek herself admits, this album is certainly a maximalist one.1 The diversity of sounds and timbres, moods and influences is great. “Welcome to My Island” is a driving electronic rock piece with robotic verse deliveries, a powerful chorus, and a semi-rapped rant. It really feels like an invitation to the rest of the record. It sets the mood both tonally and lyrically: we find ourselves on Polachek’s “island” of catchy and experimental pop where, ambitiously, “nothing’s gonna be the same again.”
“Pretty is Possible” feels very 90s (in a good way). It’s reminiscient of Dido-esque trip hop, fitting since Dido is featured later on the album. Polachek really shows her beautiful lyric-soprano voice here and throughout the rest of the album. It’s like Celine Dion on MDMA.
“Bunny is a Rider” has a funky bassline, child’s laugh sample, and a whistling hook. It’s a catchy electropop single. I really enjoyed it when it came out two years ago, but’s it remains a fun track to return to.
“Sunset” is guided by a flamenco guitar line punctuated with hand claps. A haunting and trilling vocal line carries the song into its next part. This track features a pretty chorus about love featuring lines about sunsets, horizons, etc. These lyrics carry on a central lyrical theme of the album: summer, beaches, palm trees. Interesting themes for a Valentine’s Day release.
“Crude Drawing of an Angel” is an eerie and cavernous piece featuring the sort of fretless bass and minimal percussion one would find in a mid-80s Peter Gabriel or Kate Bush song. It’s a very intimate track, filled with dramatic and anxiety-inducing dynamics. [This was a highlight of the live show for me.]
“I Believe” features some of the best couplets of the album. Recurring themes of passion and messy love come through over an instrumental that reminds me slightly of early 2000s pop, although more transcendent and biting.
“Fly to You” features Grimes and Dido. A very downtempo and chilled drum’n’bass beat support phlegmatic verses from both guest stars. It’s a nice song, but it seems relatively uninteresting compared to the rest of an album chalked-full of ideas and adventurous sounds.
“Blood and Butter” is a jungly ode to a beautiful person’s inside and out. I really like the synthy break towards the mid-point.
“Hopedrunk Everlasting” is a world-weary song. Polachek lets out lines like “real life is a rumor” while synth pads slowly build.
Despite an attractive Procol Harum-esque, progressive rock organ build up and lots of additional percussive moving parts, “Butterfly Net” doesn’t seem to go anywhere. However, like the rest of the album, it features sophisticated and lovely lyricism. The lyrics evoke the feeling that love is slipping through one’s fingers (or butterfly net).
“Smoke” carries on the islandly visual themes and features a powerful synthy bass. But there’s a slightly-detectable mid-to-late album drag in these past two tracks.
“Billions” is the album closer, and like “Welcome to My Island”, it is a stand-out track. An interesting and percussive electronica beat allows Polachek to sail over this track with glistening vocals. Bells and overdriven guitar, glitchy vocal effects, bubbly warps, deep drones, buzzing saws. Then a simple yet unavoidable piano melody comes in. Children’s choirs sing over themselves and develop to create an undoubtably memorable and anthemic chorus. It’s a triumphant closer. It seems that whether the love that was being lost in the previous few songs is regained or not: she doesn’t care. It no longer matters whether the love between the painter-like lover serenaded in “Blood and Butter” and the sailor-like liar slipping out of the picture in “Butterfly Net” is reconstituted. As the choir proceeds, our album’s subject has her ego melting outwardly into a selfless web.
Desire, I Want to Turn Into You is an album of pulsating electronica, flamenco, trip hop, pop, rock and more. It’s a maximalist summer album full of allusions to islands, sunsets, and Mediterranean mythologies. It’s also about love, sex, and loss. Despite some minimal lagging moments, it is a fun and lush work of great progressive pop.
Grade: A-
Caroline Polachek. “Caroline Polachek: ‘Seeing Fiona Apple and Björk succeed without compromise felt so aspirational.’” By Shaad D’Souza. TheGuardian.com, January 13, 2023. https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jan/13/caroline-polachek-on-pop-privacy-and-imperfection-i-wanted-undeniable-anthemic-diva-moments. Accessed February 24, 2023.