In a year flavored predominantly by hip hop weirdos, female singer songwriters and artists who encompass elements of both, Minneapolis' Polica arrived to spike the punch with ingredients more potent than sweet but subtle enough to pique the listener's attention. Give You the Ghost, possibly the most aptly titled album of the year, resembles more a stir of echoes than a debut album. It's a haunted house of ethereal melodies, a ghostship on ambient seas. It's a sonic salvia, if you will, that connects listeners to some unreachable, great beyond where we dream and where we die.
Chances are, you won't hear a thing this year that's half as mesmerizing.
Musically, the band's sound is an exercise in deceptive simplicity. It markedly lacks the guitar histrionics of typical rock music, opting instead for endless waves of gentle keyboard sounds. Aided and abetted by the dextrous basslines of Chris Bierden, Polica's musical aesthetic is, in all actuality, a polyrhythmic attack powered by the dual drumkits of Ben Ivascu and Drew Christopherson. The end result, executed with easeful finesse, forms an hypnotically effective springboard for the vocal theatrics and effects of singer Channy Leaneagh.
Leaneagh's captivating vocal performance, with all due respect to the rest of the band, is worth the price of admission alone. And while the vocals are autotuned for artistic effect, the grasp of her voice far surpasses the crass reach of a million mediocre hip hop songs. Instantly, it is clear that this is not the autotune Jay-Z was griping about.
Give You the Ghost, however, works as more than an aesthetic allusion to the band's sound. It points in a metaphorical yet very direct way towards the emotional content of the record. No matter how otherworldly the vocals sound, Leaneagh's lyrical concerns betray a woman touched by very real and very human anxieties. Themes of dissolution, confusion, abandonment and discovery abound here. There are numerous contemplations centered on the dutiful and whistful themes of mothers and daughters. There are pointed lingerings on matrimony, tinged with pragmatic sadness at one turn and liberated elation at others.
Leaneagh is a revelation in progress as she sorts through the sadness, longing and fear of her life. The record, functioning much like Hephaestus' forge, breaks down the raw elements of her anxieties and hopes as she is melted into new and more resilient shapes. With every passing track, she emereges more fully realized as both a person and an artist. And while it would be easy for Leanagh to coast on the vast sonic ocean that her band creates around her, make no mistake, her emotionally charged melodies are the turbulence of the tides. The undertow here is a purely vocal one that sucks the listener in and pulls them along for the ride.
Packed with potent melodies and expansive sonic soundscapes, Give You the Ghost brings a currency to the year that has been in suprisingly short supply: beauty. Haunting, emotive, whistful beauty. Fans of Massive Attack, Tricky, Bjork and Portishead should (especially) welcome the album as a throwback to a time when the words trip and hop were used together and without irony. That's right teenyboppers, sad bastard electronic music is back.
tracklist
Amongster
I See My Mother
Violent Games
Dark Star
Form
The Maker
Lay Your Cards Out
Fist, Teeth, Money
Happy Be Fine
Wandering Star
Leading to Death
Track by track, this was probably the record I listened to the most this year. It's stunning in all the best ways that a debut album should be but certain songs inevitably haunt more than others.
"Lay Your Cards Out," "Wandering Star" and "Leading to Death" all exude the perfect mix of Polica- beautiful but defiant in the face of heartbreak. But when Leanaegh sings "I need some time to think about my life without you" in "Happy Be Fine," it's enough to give one fits.
