Bunny is an Actress: Thoughts on Desire, I Want To Turn Into You
Caroline Polachek is the Ultimate Theater Kid
A specific music fan—probably loves Björk, probably some kind of queer, probably will tell you they loved Kate Bush before the “Running Up That Hill” Stranger Things bump—is already sick of Caroline Polachek.
Something shifted in the 580 days between the release of Polachek’s second album Desire, I Want To Turn Into You and July 14th, 2021, when its lead single “Bunny Is A Rider” came out. She appeared at every music festival imaginable. She opened for Dua Lipa’s blockbuster Future Nostalgia tour. “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings'' went viral. Spotify forced “Bunny Is a Rider” into every queue. Us art-pop fans were inundated with Caroline Polachek, who only had one album under her name – 2019’s mystical, angular Pang.
(An aside: Despite her omnipresence in indie circles now, real ones know that she isn’t some new internet-y presence in pop. For over a decade, that voice has been haunting pop’s left-of-center: as one half of the blog band Chairlift and passing along songs to Beyoncé [once you learn that Polachek wrote “No Angel,” you can never un-hear it. That high-register acrobatic verse is signature Bunny]).
And Caroline herself is a bit much, with her mime-like choreo and elastic wailing voice. She covers opera. She puts herself in conversations with Kate Bush, even by denying it. She posts videos of herself eating expensive pasta on her Instagram. She is self-aware of her lush extravagance, but not apologetic about it. It’s wrong to call her camp because, to be camp, you have to be tongue-in-cheek. Caroline Polachek’s tongue is not in her cheek. It’s enunciating lyrics like “There I was/With my butterfly net/Trying to catch your light.”
The 580 days between the release of “Bunny” and Desire have made Caroline’s presence overly apparent. She is simply a lot, love it or hate it. In other words, she is the ultimate theater kid.
And much like a truly talented theater kid, Caroline Polachek earns her standing ovation. Desire, I Want To Turn Into You is as sophisticated and seductive as a bold red wine. She revels in the unadulterated joy of her own arias. Across the record, Polachek performs the role of siren, lover, temptress, and muse with equal vigor. She sings with the melodrama of a monologue in an Old-World play. The whole thing is an emphatic “O Romeo!”
Polachek inserts the album title on the opening song. The chorus of “Welcome to My Island” reaches for the stars: “Deeeeesiiiiiiiirrreeeee! I want to turn into you!” She sings it like a mission statement. But the grand trick of this album is that Caroline Polachek doesn’t become desire. It’s an album about desire. It circumnavigates desire. It touches it with a stick. But it isn’t a horny album in the way her contemporaries turn into Desire. This is not an album of metamorphosis, as promised in its title, but one of cosplay. In true theatrical fashion, Polachek does a character study on the album’s namesake emotion.
Desire, I Want To Turn Into You is Caroline Polachek assembling a record out of mosaic tiles and making them into something beautiful and meaningless. It’s art-pop for art-pop’s sake. And the record succeeds because Polachek is such a theater kid; she’s good at this artful display of theatricality and much-ness. Caroline Polachek Turning Herself Into Desire is not a statement of intent. It’s her feeling flirty and making grandeur out of it. It’s the smoke and mirrors of her own acting. And that doesn’t need to mean or reach or become anything for it to be beautiful.
And, in fact, it is beautiful. The songs on Desire aren’t produced so much as they’re dug into like an archeological site: take two broken shards and find they make an ancient vase. A bass line, a whistle, snaps, and static make up skeleton of “Bunny Is a Rider.” “Hopedrunk Everasking” has a kind of echoey holiness, like it’s an ancient hymn gone to tape. The “Pretty in Possible” beat sways with trip-hop swagger. The bass of “I Believe” hits you with an immediacy and depth.
Polachek and her primary collaborator Danny L Harle are true audiophiles, sculpturing every note on this record to create reverence. Caroline’s upcoming tour is named The Spiraling Tour, and spiraling is just as apt a description for the way this record sounds, spinning choirs, orchestras, cavernous reverb, and Polachek’s indelible voice into a galaxy.
From the medieval magic of Pang to the Mediterranean climate of Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, Caroline Polachek tears through aesthetics and costumes with ferocity. The more time I spend with this album, the more the comparisons to Kate Bush and Björk feel lazy and half-hearted. Those artists sing with earnesty. Their voices recognize the vulnerability of putting themselves on display. Caroline sings with the gusto of someone born for high drama of the stage. Bunny has always been more of a rider, no sympathy. For her, it ‘ain’t nothin.’
