"I always feel a bit alienated by the term 'worldbuilding,'" Caroline Polachek tells Exclaim! from New York City, where the night before, she'd taken the stage at The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to perform an electrifying "Welcome to My Island" from a stygian void, a solitary figure tattooed with reptilian spirals of sunburn.
"There's something systematic to it," she says, pausing carefully to gather her thoughts. "Like there's a kind of J.R.R. Tolkien-style map, where everything exists and there's rules and there's a key."
The term, she explains, suggests a kind of vacuum-sealed remove; a world outside the world, one bound by the strictures of sci-fi and fantasy that exists independent of temperature and real feeling, unburdened by texture or tactility. Polachek's music, on the other hand, isn't interested in fantasy, but rather in the endless possibility of reality — her world is our world.
"The picture is never complete, and there's always exploration that can be done in any direction. The world was never built, so to speak," she says. "I think interacting with the world that I'm in is kind of the essential key to this album."
The album in question is February's Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, a dazzling, kinetic statement of intent that's placed Polachek at the furthest reaches of pop music's rapidly mutating future. The newness of her music, however (created largely alongside Danny L Harle, Desire's quicksilver production feels beamed in from a dozen alternate hereafters), is offset by a nostalgic passion for physicality, the record's visuals and performances defined by a Henson-esque dedication to the warmth and human grit of theatrical sets and physical effects.
"That's something that I really, actively aspired to," Polachek says. "Especially during the pandemic — feeling everything go online and exist in this very ephemeral place — I was watching a lot of film, and having that conversation that a lot of people have about how much better special effects looked back before they went digital."
Polachek's and her collaborators' past creations include a labyrinth of cardboard boxes; a minotaur's hoof-as-selfie-stick; a ghostly, grapevine-laden pergola and an enormous rotating boulder complete with a voice-modulating button, just to name a few. Her work feels, above all else, utterly and sometimes uncomfortably human, each effect crafted lovingly and with a refreshing disregard for perfection and self-seriousness.
Just look at Desire's much-lauded cover image, which finds Polachek crawling on the floor of a crowded bus, sun on her face and sand beneath her fingers as she moves toward the mouth of some unknown portal. When she shared the artwork in December of last year, fans flew into a frenzy of decoding possible references and string-board map-making; the ants that crawl across the sand, the crude angel scrawled on the wall, the Vesuvius sticker, even the nature of Polachek's high-heeled boot — what does it all mean?
"Abstraction is such a beautiful tool, because for anyone who is willing to spend time with the music or the art, it actually triggers a creative process inside of you, the listener," she says. "I'm throwing two things at you that don't necessarily seem literally connected, so you find the point of connection that truly only exists for you as a listener. And that process, of the listener's creativity, I think is deeply psychedelic and very personal."
That hallucinogenic effect is equally potent in Polachek's words, which refuse linear narratives and literal interpretation in favour of truth in its most base form. When Polachek says "Wikipediated" on "Billions," or sings the topsy-turvy title of "Hopedrunk Everasking," she's not attempting to throw veils or drop smoke bombs; she's trying, desperately, to explain things exactly as they are.
"I think it's important to say that what I'm doing is not evading meaning," she explains. "Because all of these lines are incredibly evocative and very meaningful. It's just the best way that I can [convey meaning]. In some ways, it's a more accurate way of depicting feelings and sensations."
She continues, "When I'm looking to write lyrics, for example, I'm trying to do my best to capture the sense of dynamics that are in my imagination. It needs to blossom, it needs to bear fruit, it needs to break open, it needs to take a hard left turn — these sense of dynamics, I feel them before I find the right words for them, or sometimes the right sounds for them. And in that sense, it has nothing to do with embellishment and everything to do with loyalty."
Loyalty to the world's essential truths, the wild core of feeling, is also what guides Polachek's genre-agnostic muse, her uncanny ability to smear her music through dozens of era-specific sounds and come out the other side with a previously unknown colour. One of Desire's major sonic touchstones is the searching, feminine electro-folk of the late '90s and early 2000s, a period that saw traditional musical forms being spliced with what, at the time, were the energies of the future.
Dido herself — the author of songs like "White Flag" and "Thank You," music that can change your life if you allow it to — appears on Desire, lending her voice to the diaphanous, urgent flutter of "Fly to You," which also features Grimes.
"It wasn't so much wanting to go back to that time or wanting to evoke a genre, but actually studying what spoke to me about it, and then doing my own version of that feeling," Polachek explains. "I don't really think about the idea of pastiche. When I'm making music, I think about magic more, and there being these kind of magic things that certain genres have nailed through various techniques and combinations of sounds."
Polachek's ability to recognize and extract the essence of these musical movements — devoid of taste-making cultural baggage or gendered dismissal — isn't relegated only to those in the distant-enough-for-reevaluation past; as she explains it, there's room to be moved by the ubiquitous, reality-contouring music of our own age, should you open yourself to its possibilities.
"I had this revelation a few years ago when Avicii died," she says. "Because I was never really a fan of Avicii. His music, it was just stuff I would hear in cabs and in supermarkets."
She continues, "And when he died, I remember hearing one of his songs on the radio and it hit me so hard, how when artists come in and invent the sound that becomes the sound of normality, we don't often give them enough credit for this kind of emotional architecture they build for society. We just look at it and we're like, 'Oh, that's just another face of a building.' But it's this hyper-creativity that completely sculpts our sense of what normal is, what normal culture is."
If there's one lesson to take from Desire — an album that, in reality, contains a million lessons and a million questions, a living breathing thing in continual flux — it's to unlock a curiosity about the way things are, to abandon maps and explanations in favour of feeling.
"I think having a sense of navigation has taken precedence over a sense of enjoyment," Polachek says. "And I kind of want to make that impossible for people. I want to make the quick read quite difficult."
The world was never built. The possibilities remain endless, the exploration unceasing. "I mean, I feel like I have no idea who I am," she says. "But I am learning more and more about what I like."
"There's something systematic to it," she says, pausing carefully to gather her thoughts. "Like there's a kind of J.R.R. Tolkien-style map, where everything exists and there's rules and there's a key."
The term, she explains, suggests a kind of vacuum-sealed remove; a world outside the world, one bound by the strictures of sci-fi and fantasy that exists independent of temperature and real feeling, unburdened by texture or tactility. Polachek's music, on the other hand, isn't interested in fantasy, but rather in the endless possibility of reality — her world is our world.
"The picture is never complete, and there's always exploration that can be done in any direction. The world was never built, so to speak," she says. "I think interacting with the world that I'm in is kind of the essential key to this album."
The album in question is February's Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, a dazzling, kinetic statement of intent that's placed Polachek at the furthest reaches of pop music's rapidly mutating future. The newness of her music, however (created largely alongside Danny L Harle, Desire's quicksilver production feels beamed in from a dozen alternate hereafters), is offset by a nostalgic passion for physicality, the record's visuals and performances defined by a Henson-esque dedication to the warmth and human grit of theatrical sets and physical effects.
"That's something that I really, actively aspired to," Polachek says. "Especially during the pandemic — feeling everything go online and exist in this very ephemeral place — I was watching a lot of film, and having that conversation that a lot of people have about how much better special effects looked back before they went digital."
Polachek's and her collaborators' past creations include a labyrinth of cardboard boxes; a minotaur's hoof-as-selfie-stick; a ghostly, grapevine-laden pergola and an enormous rotating boulder complete with a voice-modulating button, just to name a few. Her work feels, above all else, utterly and sometimes uncomfortably human, each effect crafted lovingly and with a refreshing disregard for perfection and self-seriousness.
Just look at Desire's much-lauded cover image, which finds Polachek crawling on the floor of a crowded bus, sun on her face and sand beneath her fingers as she moves toward the mouth of some unknown portal. When she shared the artwork in December of last year, fans flew into a frenzy of decoding possible references and string-board map-making; the ants that crawl across the sand, the crude angel scrawled on the wall, the Vesuvius sticker, even the nature of Polachek's high-heeled boot — what does it all mean?
"Abstraction is such a beautiful tool, because for anyone who is willing to spend time with the music or the art, it actually triggers a creative process inside of you, the listener," she says. "I'm throwing two things at you that don't necessarily seem literally connected, so you find the point of connection that truly only exists for you as a listener. And that process, of the listener's creativity, I think is deeply psychedelic and very personal."
That hallucinogenic effect is equally potent in Polachek's words, which refuse linear narratives and literal interpretation in favour of truth in its most base form. When Polachek says "Wikipediated" on "Billions," or sings the topsy-turvy title of "Hopedrunk Everasking," she's not attempting to throw veils or drop smoke bombs; she's trying, desperately, to explain things exactly as they are.
"I think it's important to say that what I'm doing is not evading meaning," she explains. "Because all of these lines are incredibly evocative and very meaningful. It's just the best way that I can [convey meaning]. In some ways, it's a more accurate way of depicting feelings and sensations."
She continues, "When I'm looking to write lyrics, for example, I'm trying to do my best to capture the sense of dynamics that are in my imagination. It needs to blossom, it needs to bear fruit, it needs to break open, it needs to take a hard left turn — these sense of dynamics, I feel them before I find the right words for them, or sometimes the right sounds for them. And in that sense, it has nothing to do with embellishment and everything to do with loyalty."
Loyalty to the world's essential truths, the wild core of feeling, is also what guides Polachek's genre-agnostic muse, her uncanny ability to smear her music through dozens of era-specific sounds and come out the other side with a previously unknown colour. One of Desire's major sonic touchstones is the searching, feminine electro-folk of the late '90s and early 2000s, a period that saw traditional musical forms being spliced with what, at the time, were the energies of the future.
Dido herself — the author of songs like "White Flag" and "Thank You," music that can change your life if you allow it to — appears on Desire, lending her voice to the diaphanous, urgent flutter of "Fly to You," which also features Grimes.
"It wasn't so much wanting to go back to that time or wanting to evoke a genre, but actually studying what spoke to me about it, and then doing my own version of that feeling," Polachek explains. "I don't really think about the idea of pastiche. When I'm making music, I think about magic more, and there being these kind of magic things that certain genres have nailed through various techniques and combinations of sounds."
Polachek's ability to recognize and extract the essence of these musical movements — devoid of taste-making cultural baggage or gendered dismissal — isn't relegated only to those in the distant-enough-for-reevaluation past; as she explains it, there's room to be moved by the ubiquitous, reality-contouring music of our own age, should you open yourself to its possibilities.
"I had this revelation a few years ago when Avicii died," she says. "Because I was never really a fan of Avicii. His music, it was just stuff I would hear in cabs and in supermarkets."
She continues, "And when he died, I remember hearing one of his songs on the radio and it hit me so hard, how when artists come in and invent the sound that becomes the sound of normality, we don't often give them enough credit for this kind of emotional architecture they build for society. We just look at it and we're like, 'Oh, that's just another face of a building.' But it's this hyper-creativity that completely sculpts our sense of what normal is, what normal culture is."
If there's one lesson to take from Desire — an album that, in reality, contains a million lessons and a million questions, a living breathing thing in continual flux — it's to unlock a curiosity about the way things are, to abandon maps and explanations in favour of feeling.
"I think having a sense of navigation has taken precedence over a sense of enjoyment," Polachek says. "And I kind of want to make that impossible for people. I want to make the quick read quite difficult."
The world was never built. The possibilities remain endless, the exploration unceasing. "I mean, I feel like I have no idea who I am," she says. "But I am learning more and more about what I like."