A few months ago, Caroline Polachek was filming the music video for her 80s pop fantasia Welcome to My Island, trying to explain that her makeup needed to capture “the mania that comes with desire and striving”. “I was like: ‘I need to look desperate and pathetic,’” she says. Her reference point was someone “crawling out of a house party”, mascara bleeding on to their cheeks. Her glam team were bemused. “Excuse me?” she recalls them saying.
Her directive was firm. A musician for nearly 20 years – from indie darling in Chairlift to songwriter for Beyoncé, ambient experimentalist and now alternative pop star – Polachek, 37, has perfected the art of writing songs about the kind of emotion that, as she describes it, “doesn’t fit in the world”. With its crisp guitar solo and howling vocals, Welcome to My Island takes that idea to the next level, evoking the “side of vulnerability and openness that’s not always pretty”. It’s not darkness, she says, but “an essential part of being alive”.
