Caroline Polachek’s 2019 album Pang established her as an inventive solo artist to be reckoned with. Formerly part of indie pop group Chairlift, as well as a songwriter for industry titans like Beyoncé, Polachek garnered a larger following with the album, as songs like “Door” and “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” were admired for Polachek’s own soaring vocals and the delightfully sugar-coated yet artsy instrumentation. After a slew of remixes and features for other artists, she returned to original solo music for the first time in two years with 2021’s “Bunny Is A Rider.” In addition, she released a string of singles last year, announcing a new album entitled Desire, I Want To Turn Into You, slated for a Valentine’s Day release.
“Lеt me dive / through your face / to thе sweetest kind of pain,” Polachek valiantly declares on the chorus of “Blood and Butter,” the latest single from Desire, I Want To Turn Into You. It bathes the listener in its intensity, as she rattles down every single detail about her lover — from them wearing “denim and bows” to being “mythicalogical and Wikipediated.” Her stunning vocals flutter over a bed of crystallized choral synths and frigid boops and beeps, beautifully crossing worlds into sun-soaked, lazy-day guitar chords as if to indicate the unbreakable quality of their love. The song’s outro plunges into an unexpected yet captivating bagpipe solo, a fitting conclusion to the euphoric atmospheric foliage she’s conjured. It’s perfectly mellow, capturing the song’s dizzying highs with enough heft to never feel bland or lethargic.
Polachek herself described the song as being about “spiraling upward,” which couldn’t be more dead-on — it truly is “head empty, no thoughts” for her, a state of being so deeply in love that everything else blurs. She’s in a perpetual state of marvel, singing “Where did you come from, you?” If anything about this implies uncertainty, think again. “Blood and Butter” is a wonderful testament to the power of love, the blissful states it evokes and a reminder that it’s completely okay to be as head over heels for someone as Polachek is here. Maybe you’ll even invent new words to compliment them.
Daily Arts Writer Thejas Varma can be reached at thejasv@umich.edu.