Album Review: Caroline Polachek Hits Where It Hurts

In her dreamy debut album, Polachek shows off her vocal technique and production skills while divulging her experience with lost love.

Written by Kasey Clarke

Photo courtesy of Pitchfork

Two years after pop group Chairlift’s split, the group’s vocalist, Caroline Polachek, has released her debut solo album Pang. Pang takes the sad aspects of being in love, a topic explored on Chairlift’s final album, Moth, and twists them even further to create a break up album that toggles between exaltation and existentialism. 

Polachek has previously released solo projects: the electronic, experimental album Arcadia under the pseudonym Ramona Lisa in 2014, and a minimal, instrumental album Drawing the Target Around the Arrow under her initials, CEP, in 2017. However, her debut album under her full name is her first solo album to focus on her power as a vocalist. Her range and vocal control is astounding, which is no surprise considering Polachek has classical opera training in baroque style. Baroque music is known for emphasizing contrast between high and low notes and was the musical period in which opera was developed, merging vocals and instrumentation to make them equally balanced in storytelling. These characteristics leak into Pang’s sound which balances electronic elements with sweeping glissandos. 

Like an opera is told through speech-like, plot driven rectitiaves balanced with arias, Pang bounces between Polachek meditating on her place in love and life on songs like “New Normal” and “Look At Me Now,” with more lyrically sparse but emotionally expressive tracks like “Ocean of Tears” and “Insomnia.”

But Polachek also delivers an intensely modern and innovative album. With production credits by PC Music’s Danny L Harle and A.G. Cook, Pang’s operatic vocal runs are electronically distorted in the style characteristic of the experimental pop label. On “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings,” Polachek uses her voice in place of a guitar solo. Her electronically manipulated voice leaks out of her mouth as green steam in the music video, creating a break in the ‘80s sounding pop song that would sound like emotional wailing if it weren’t masked by vocal modulation.

On “Insomnia,” Polacheck’s vocals are digitally augmented to emphasize her operatic qualities. Backed with and echoing choir and a synthesized bass, “Insomnia” exemplifies the melding of robotic sounds with the baring of deep human emotion that is thematic throughout the album.

Photo courtesy of Perpetual Novice

Although meticulous in its stylization, “Pang” also packs a strong narrative punch. Punctuated by the low of “Insomnia,” Polachek tells the story of her divorce from fellow musician Ian Drennan. Title track “Pang” begins the album in the height of a relationship, but lyrics like “It's a beautiful knife cutting right where the fear should be” suggest the danger in the vulnerability of love. “What can I not destroy for you?” she asks her lover. 

On “Hit Me Where It Hurts,” Polachek sings about “feeling like a butterfly trapped inside a plane” as she is experiencing change her life without being able to control it. On the following track, “I Give Up,” she succumbs to helplessness and admits defeat, admitting, “Now I know what it means to unravel / It's a new and shallow grief / And a pathetic kind of sad relief.” 

The simultaneous grief and relief stemming from her failed relationship lies at the heart of what Polachek expresses through this album. Her intense lows are contrasted with new highs as she regains freedom and emerges from her emotional turmoil with new clarity. “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” still centers on missing her relationship, but rather than being sad, it is charged with lust and humor. The backing vocals repeat, “show me your banana” but are mixed to sound like a wordless “sha na na.” The shift in mood provides needed release from the emotional lows earlier in the album, pushing the narrative towards its close.

Closing track “Parachute” ends with a serene relief, as Polachek tells of a parachute pulling her through the air, suggesting that it will land somewhere safe. “Go on,” she says. “Take me, it will feel like going home.” Ending on a literal high note, “Parachute” helps frame the collection of songs as cathartic rather than chaotic.

Stylistically and emotionally, Pang is an album of contrasts. It collapses elements of music through a wide stretch of time — from opera, to Kate Bush-esque vocals, to 2000s pop style beats — to create a sound at the forefront of modern pop. It also paints a heart-wrenching but freeing picture of giving your all to love until you have to give up. As Polachek sheds this part of her past, this album pushes her into the future.