Caroline Polachek

I kind of hate when album covers do fake “vinyl wear” or distressed textures. Idk if the plastic fold texture is part of the actual album cover but I hate it lol.

New song is good, very ready for this album

i like the cover, it's funny. it's very classic rock

cover is good. danny l harle with his kid is cute

"Blood and Butter" - it's fine, very much an album track imo. she should just drop the whole thing already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0iqFWx4H04

two more weeks! I'll probably save listening to the new song until the album drops

Hmm just noticed this on the tracklist, hard to imagine the three of them on one song:

7. "Fly to You" (featuring Grimes and Dido)

new album is easily her best since something

That dido and grimes song is already available in some countries.

Too much grimes not enough Dido

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1B7-L068op0

Oh actually the whole thing gets released at midnight.

Haven’t listened but it seems asides from the previous singles people are loving “butterfly net” the most and “i believe” and “smoke”

Oh actually the whole thing gets released at midnight.

― ✖✖✖ (Moka)

It's already streaming now. Sounding great so far.

xp yeah those are all great

Butterfly Net is astonishing.

Goddamit it still not available for me. Must resist the temptation.

Not sure how I'd rank this against Something and Pang yet - both amazing albums to me - but this was lovely on first listen. the Grimes/Dido collaboration makes sense now, basically the Venn diagram intersection of the three artists

pang had some real high points but it was a fair bit more oblique overall while desire is all hits

I think her aesthetics continue to elude me. There are plenty of ideas here and the skeletal-exotic-ethereal electro pop sound is interesting, but I'm not sure any of it sticks with me. Still enjoyed the listen.

This is a lot of fun. I kind of rolled my eyes but also smiled approvingly at the sequencing of "I Believe" and "Fly To You" back to back, if you're gonna be up on current trends you may as well flaunt it.

First listen:

Caroline’s songwriting is good but the real star here for me is Danny L Harle’s production to the point I think this should have been billed as a Polachek + Harle album instead of a solo album.

What I love the most is that it seems to channel that almost forgotten downtempo/folktronica era of late 90’s/early 00’s: William Orbit, Frou Frou, Zero 7, Imogen Heap, those downtempo ibiza/cafe del mar compilations… it’s a sound that noone seemed interested in revive as it pretty much saturated the market and said everything it needed to say back then, but Polachek and Harle are masters of their craft and update it to a new style of their own.

Minor complaint: Dido makes perfect sense in an album that channels this early 00’s vibe, but she was underused. I like Vinnie’s comment upthread. That song does really sound like a Venn Diagram between the three singers involved.

Also like that the album is concise and has no filler. The singles are probably the highlight for me - although Butterfly Net sounded great too - but it’s too early to tell after one listen.

I’m still not sure if I like it more than Pang, it’s a whole different beast.

Really like this (as expected, since I already knew and liked half of it). My faves are still the pre-release singles, but some of the others might get there with repetition. Of the ones I didn't know, my favorites off the bat are "I Believe" and "Smoke." But I dig the whole vibe of it.

"Butterfly Net" has been mentioned a few times but that was also the biggest standout of the new songs to me. A classically beautiful song

It hasn't sunk in for me yet but a few more listens may reveal it, since it seems widely liked.

The Grimes connection makes a ton of sense, though I'd never considered it before -- aside from the guest spot, "Blood and Butter" recalls "California."

It remind me more of “Easily” but it’s because both songs sound super influenced by William Orbit to me with the acoustic guitars and those echo-ed bleeps that are sort of his signature sound.

Yeah William Orbit really is a good reference point. Her aesthetic is kind of rooted in that Y2K vibe.

yeah it's all very late 90s downtempo electronica, which is also what art angels was heavily drawing upon, just more energetically (the ray of light title track etc.)

if anyone was going to do a 2020s equivalent of "Hide And Seek" it would be Caroline Polachek

Don't forget about Taylor Swift's "Clean."

Heap's influence on modern pop was covered in this pitchfork piece and Polachek's vocals are mentioned: "You can hear Heap in the slippery, divine runs of the classically-trained art-pop virtuoso Caroline Polachek, who inflects so precisely that she sounds as if she’s using Auto-Tune when she’s not."

Just put on Speak for Yourself for the first time in ages and it sounds fantastic. Had no recollection of how layered "Goodnight and Go" is, nor the delightfully weird instrumental bridge.

I Megaphone (Imogen's debut) is also perhaps the archetypal example of a late nineties debut sounding like a Spin article about electronica vomited rainbows on the arrangements - this is not a criticism exactly, though it's certainly a bit clunkier than Ray of Light or Kylie's Impossible Princess or Tori's From The Choirgirl Hotel (which, remarkably given the resemblances, Imogen and her producers could not have heard before finishing the album).

Speak for Yourself is a strong album. I still listen to it now and then and Caroline's autotune-like vocal glides sound just like her

Everything else Imogen Heap has done before and after that album is a letdown by comparison, excepting a couple Frou Frou songs. Really a one-album wonder

OK "Butterfly Net" hooked me this time through. I just needed to slow down enough to appreciate the melody.

Second listen…

The songs that start with “B” are the best ones for me by far: Butterfly Net, Bunny, Billions, Blood and Butter.

I lied before, there is some filler: Crude drawing and hopedrunk are it, but they’re sequenced very smart in the album and serve as darker, moody, palette cleansers from the more brighter songs in between them.

All the goodwill I had for Grimes is gone completely and she ruins “fly to you” for me. Wish either Grimes was completely gone off this record or Dido was a feature on another song without her, Dido works but her only verse in there isn’t enough to make me want to listen to Grimes in 2023. Only skippable song for me on second listen.

Had the same thought about the Grimes feature. Unfortunate.

"Smoke" is a highlight for me, too.

Polachek sounds terrific.

if anyone was going to do a 2020s equivalent of "Hide And Seek" it would be Caroline Polachek

― boxedjoy, Tuesday, February 14, 2023 5:25 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psSIJig_xnY

RYM really likes this eh

I suppose I'll have to see if it's a bit more enjoyable this time

I'm liking this album so far, but every time "Hopedrunk Everasking" comes on, it sets me on edge because there is a little high pitched ping noise that sounds exactly like my smoke detector flickering on and off, which it does whenever I have a power outage.

lol

That's the track I skip.

i know this makes me sound like an old grump but I wish she'd lay off the autotune on her vocals; she doesn't need it obviously and it's done for aesthetic effect only, but it wears on my ears. does she need to use it on every single song?

there is a little high pitched ping noise that sounds exactly like my smoke detector flickering on and off

lol for me it sounds like a squeak our dryer makes sometimes, and so far every time that song comes on (when I'm at home, anyway) my first thought is that there's a load of clothes in there.

re autotune, I recognize that it's present but honestly I barely notice it — it feels of a piece with her whole sonic conception.

Gonna get on my soapbox for this one. As you kind of note, autotune (and similar processors) is generally used for 2 different purposes: correcting tuning and as a special effect. The first time I heard it used as an effect was on "Believe" by Cher some 25 years ago, so it's been around a long time! Now is it a bit of a cliche to use it as an effect at this point? Maybe, maybe not. But I would note that no one ever comments on other effects that are used on pretty much every single vocal recording like reverb, delay, compression, etc. It is just another in the arsenal of effects that are available and used constantly and should be seen as part of the landscape rather than something on which it is worth taking a polemical stance.

Yeah I agree with that, I've actually enjoyed the way all sorts of different musicians are playing with autotune as an effect. It doesn't always work — sometimes it's distracting — but used well it adds another texture.

Also I agree with the above sentiments about Hopedrunk and Crude Drawing, I think they work in the flow of the album but they are kind of meh as songs.

Yeah "Crude Drawing" is kind of a nothing track. I'm also not big on "I Believe". Ultimately the album falls a little short of Pang to me, but I do like that it's more ambitious than Pang and hope she keeps stretching on future material

“I Believe” doesn’t quite work for me. It feels too upbeat for her if it makes sense.

I’d probably rank them as

4/5 stars
Bunny
Blood
Billions
Butterflly

3/5
The rest

Haha yes the "B"-sides are the best

I love those synth stabs in "I Believe," but those things are my language

I like that way more than most of the other 'recent' stuff!