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Tag: Caroline Polachek music videos

  • Where There’s “Smoke”…There’s Fiery Hot Lava About to Burn You: Caroline Polachek Releases the Perfect Volcano Anthem

    Where There’s “Smoke”…There’s Fiery Hot Lava About to Burn You: Caroline Polachek Releases the Perfect Volcano Anthem

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    In case anyone was looking for a song to dance to when the next inevitable volcano eruption ensues, Caroline Polachek has you covered with “Smoke,” the fifth video to hatch from her Desire, I Want to Turn Into You album. Like two of her other music videos from this album cycle, “Sunset” and “Welcome to My Island,” the overall aesthetic and editing techniques are designed to look similarly “DIY,” or, as Polachek put it, “I just wanted to make a classic shoegaze video without having to do the music part.” Which she already loosely did with both of the aforementioned videos. And it was also in “Welcome to My Island” that a volcano plays a central role as one of the backdrops while “lava” bursts forth from Polachek’s own mouth. Perhaps the volcano metaphor in relationships is just too good to pass up a second time in “Smoke.”

    Visually lush and sumptuous in a different way than “Billions,” Polachek evokes, in many ways, the Andy Warhol painting of Mount Vesuvius entitled, what else, “Vesuvius.” This done with a volcano “structure” that looks as though it was crafted of, let’s call it, “theater cloth” as she does her dance in front of it. Almost as though using her witchy arm movements to attempt conjuring the lava to come out and play. She then opens with the assurance, “It’s just smoke/Floating over the volcano/It’s just smoke/Go on, you know I can’t say no/It’s just smoke.” Ignoring the fact that, in this case, where there’s smoke, there’s bound to be scalding lava.

    Such an allusion to relationship difficulties mirrors the same tactic Taylor Swift uses on Lover’s “Afterglow” with an “explosion metaphor,” including, “Chemistry ’til it blows up, ’til there’s no us” and “I’m the one who burned us down/But it’s not what I meant/I’m sorry that I hurt you…/I need to say, hey, it’s all me, just don’t go/Meet me in the afterglow.” But, as Pompeiians weren’t able to attest, there is no such thing as an “afterglow” to meet in once the eruption has ceased.

    As Polachek’s band is silhouetted and superimposed over her own interpretive dance homages to the volcano, she declares in earnest, “And you are the big answer tonight/And you are melting everything about me/Oh, don’t worry about me, it’s just—” That unspoken cutoff being, you guessed it, “smoke.” Warming to the dangers of a “smoky” lover, Polachek is inspired to take her interpretive arm gestures to the next level as a disjointed shadow pair of her arms moves in front of her body as Peter Pan’s shadow might. Matt Copson, the director of the video (as well as Polachek’s boyfriend) then cuts to a close-up image on Polachek’s face (bedecked in her signature eye makeup style…that feels like a riff on Amy Winehouse meets Cleopatra) with the theater cloth volcano in the background—ever-looming, ever-beckoning. If desire is what Polachek wants to turn into, diving in headfirst to the volcano of love is a good start. Ignoring the smoke a.k.a. the ultimate sign of an inevitable eruption. Of course, on the positive side of figurative language, that could also mean an imminent orgasm as much as imminent disaster.

    When the series of chanted “na-na-na, na-na-na, na-na-na-na-das” reaches a crescendo at the end of the song, Polachek—letting out a complementing “war cry,” of sorts—is shown on her knees looking skyward from an overhead angle at the center of a lava-red spiral. Letting loose more than ever with her theatrical dance stylings, smoke circles all around her, enveloping her. It certainly goes against all those fire safety videos people were shown in school about how to keep smoke from entering your lungs. But Polachek is committed to the perilous cause of love, announcing of the ash and smoke, “The fallout doesn’t faze me.”

    That much is clearly true if this calm, tranquil visual of Polachek daring the volcano to erupt as she inhales its smoke is any indication. And, as climate change increasingly becomes “the name of the game” in the “20s,” it’s some “comfort” to know there’s a ditty to turn to should one find themselves amid an irascible volcano. Surely, the Pompeiians would’ve appreciated if this song could have played before the big lava smackdown came to wipe them out.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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  • “Sunset” Video: Caroline Polachek Lives Her Best Life in Barcelona While Channeling Beth Orton and “La Isla Bonita”

    “Sunset” Video: Caroline Polachek Lives Her Best Life in Barcelona While Channeling Beth Orton and “La Isla Bonita”

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    When one is as well-traveled as Caroline Polachek, it’s probably hard to be “impressed” by much of any milieu. After all, this is the girl who lived in Tokyo during her early years—an influence that was perhaps obfuscated by then being relegated to Greenwich, CT. But, as those in the know are aware, all the faux rebellious girls live in Greenwich, dipping into NYC (where, like Lizzy Grant, Polachek was born—the day before her, in fact) to unleash some of that pent-up repression on the weekend and then go back to being a docile ducky when Monday arrives.

    Which is exactly what Polachek did when she went to concerts and got a taste of the “rock n’ roll” lifestyle long enough to know that she wanted to be part of it (hence, Chairlift). And yes, Polachek was obviously a rich girl, which is why she can talk about (with a straight face) things like how horseback riding taught her a lot about rhythm with regard to understanding music. Clearly, it must be true—for “Sunset” is yet another shining addition to her list of recently released singles (including “Bunny Is A Rider,” “Billions” and “Last Days: Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare”), all of which will likely comprise some of what turns out to be her second solo record (or fourth, if you want to count her work as Ramona Lisa and CEP, which many do).

    Unlike “Billions” and “Non Voglio Mai Vedere Il Sole Tramontare,” “Sunset” is filled with much more palpable levity—and, incidentally, acknowledges ultimately surrendering to what that Italian song title translates to: “I Never Want to See the Sun Set.” But, of course, it must. And what better time to release such a single than fall, when the sun starts to set ever earlier? Yet there is nothing “bleak” or “unhappy” about “Sunset,” with its up-tempo, jubilant notes accented by a Spanish flavor that automatically makes one think of “La Isla Bonita” (for Madonna is apparently not the only white girl with appropriative machinations when it comes to Spanish culture).

    And, as a Spanish-influenced track, Polachek, who co-directed the video with Matt Copson, favors a collage-oriented aesthetic that overlaps scenes and images mostly involving her walking through the streets of an ultra color-saturated Barcelona—evidently one of the cities that can still “charm” her despite what is sure to be an expected veneer of New York jadedness after having “seen the world, done it all.” Singing lyrics like, “So no regrets/‘Cause you’re my sunset, fiery red/Forever fearless/And in your arms a warm horizon/Don’t look back/Let’s ride away, let’s ride away [Bunny is, after all, a rider],” one can’t help but hear, in the same intonation, “Tropical the island breeze/All of nature wild and free/This is where I long to be/La isla bonita.” And that’s clearly where Polachek longs to be as well, also spending part of the day among the sandy beach (complete with a scene of a sand sculpture being perfected into a face). Just another perk of a rare breed of city like Barcelona, offering the beach life in addition to its metropolitan life.

    And while Polachek roams around it in a white crocheted beanie looking like an Amy Winehouse-ified (because Polachek’s heavy eyeliner is more manicured in precision) version of Beth Orton, we can automatically feel the transfer of her affinity for this place. As for the Orton comparison, it’s not just that Polachek looks so much like her, but that her acoustic vibe in this song harkens back to Orton’s 1999 hit, “Stolen Car.” And that’s how Polachek drives her own in the video—like it was stolen. Her elfin ears peeping out from behind her hair like she’s Grimes or some shit, Polachek barrels down the road as though she’s got nothing left to lose, Thelma and Louise-style. Bumper stickers also pay homage to certain of her song titles (e.g., Bunny Is A Driver), while other stickers are just an insight into her personality (e.g., I’d Rather Be Playing Magic the Gathering and Welcome to My Island—possibly also a future song title hint).

    Reminiscent in its own way of Giulia Y Los Tellarini’s “Barcelona” (which, alas, is best known for being constantly played in Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona), the upbeat and repetitive string instrumentations of her thin-body acoustic guitar are ironically contrasted against the depiction of a languid day that concludes with her tanning topless on her rooftop as she draws serenely in her notebook. For, you see, in a place like Spain, art is not deemed a “frivolous” “hobby” as it is in the U.S.

    At another point in the song, the exuberant flow is contrasted by a lyric like, “I’m wearing black to mourn the sudden loss of innocence.” This being perhaps a loose reference to the death of her father in 2020 from COVID-19. But where Polachek really cuts to the emotional core is with her series of repeated, high-pitched “ooo-ooo-ooo-ooos” toward the middle (and end) of the song as we see her walking amongst the street crowd as just another face in it. By the end of the video, however, it’s apparent she’s found her tribe, putting her clothes back on to join some revelers dancing as the sun sets.

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    Genna Rivieccio

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