Latest / Kyle Meredith With... / Rewind: Caroline Polachek & Alison Goldfrapp on Ghostly Falsettos, Heartbreak Pop, and Disco Dreams
Transcript
- 0:00[SPEAKER_00]: It's easy to hear your favorite artist on WFPK from wherever you are.
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- 0:25[SPEAKER_02]: and welcome to another edition of Kyle Meredith with.
- 0:28[SPEAKER_02]: It's the interview series presented by WFPK at WFPK.org Consequence and the Consequence Podcast Network.
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- 1:31[SPEAKER_02]: And that's me Kyle Meredith today, it's a special rewind episode.
- 1:34[SPEAKER_02]: Looking back at two interviews, one with Caroline Pullachek and Allison Goldfrapp, two vocalists who could possibly sing a grocery store list and make it sound like avant-garde pop bliss.
- 1:46[SPEAKER_02]: Caroline, formerly of chair lift, is turned to heartbreak and hyper pop into an art form.
- 1:52[SPEAKER_02]: floating somewhere between Baroque sense and in Yacore.
- 1:57[SPEAKER_02]: Let's say Allison meanwhile has spent decades wrapping disco, glam, and electro clash into one shimmering gold frapp package.
- 2:08[SPEAKER_02]: And lately she's stepped out solo just to remind us she can still make the dance floor melt.
- 2:13[SPEAKER_02]: So we're going to start back in twenty twelve with Caroline Pollachek.
- 2:19[SPEAKER_02]: This is back when she was still in chairlift.
- 2:21[SPEAKER_02]: They had just released the album, something which we got to get candid about.
- 2:25[SPEAKER_02]: She talked about her hand-dancing video fever dream and her teenage new metal past.
- 2:32[SPEAKER_02]: All that a more in this part one of a special rewind episode.
- 2:36[SPEAKER_02]: It's Kyle Meredith with Caroline Pollachek.
- 2:39[SPEAKER_02]: the record something uh... it's it's brilliant and uh... i don't mean that used to to post-moke your way right at the beginning but i've not been able to stop listening to it for the past few weeks so the first thing that jumps out of me as i first heard it was your sense of melody in this as grown so much i mean even you know beyond when you get to the lyrics and and obviously the the musical directions uh... what you're doing vocally is just i mean it's it's almost like hook after hook after hook
- 3:07[SPEAKER_02]: So what one of the last years that led you to, you know, was that a strong focus as well, I guess what I'm asking here?
- 3:13[SPEAKER_04]: I guess the relationship between my voice and melodies becomes right out of pleasure, but I see folks who think that are actually really enjoyable to sing, that are kind of like, you know, kind of, how do I put it?
- 3:30[SPEAKER_04]: Almost like where you can like massage your own body from the inside because you'll get to do it.
- 3:38[SPEAKER_04]: I like writing lines that are really fun to make voice teaching and kind of think of cars in a little bit.
- 3:45[SPEAKER_04]: You know, I think it was kind of non intellectual inspiration.
- 3:49[SPEAKER_02]: Well, like I said, it's all throughout the record and just I think a lot of artists have trouble finding one great melody for a record and I think you've probably known like a dozen or so.
- 3:59[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, so why you're making this though and all of all the success that you got from the debut record.
- 4:06[SPEAKER_02]: Was there ever that spot where you said, geez, we got to follow that one up.
- 4:10[SPEAKER_02]: You know, bruises was that whole thing that bruises was, do we have to follow bruises up or is this whatever it's going to be?
- 4:16[SPEAKER_04]: Well, the interesting thing was I didn't feel that we needed actually to write anything that resembled bruises, but we were very aware of this fact that there was an audience now for our stuff.
- 4:26[SPEAKER_04]: And in particular, an audience that was looking forward to kind of two particular aspects of our stuff.
- 4:35[SPEAKER_04]: One being the kind of like sugary positive, no idea through this.
- 4:39[SPEAKER_04]: I think that's what people really liked about that song.
- 4:42[SPEAKER_04]: And then on the other hand, it kind of like, three-in-like word play that happened a lot of the other songs.
- 4:51[SPEAKER_04]: It was interesting kind of the problem days when I thought about it.
- 4:54[SPEAKER_04]: I told like that about our stuff.
- 4:55[SPEAKER_04]: And I wanted to do that too in other days where I was like, well, fuck that.
- 4:58[SPEAKER_04]: That's not what I feel like writing to this.
- 4:59[SPEAKER_04]: I'm not going to.
- 5:00[SPEAKER_04]: And both are okay.
- 5:02[SPEAKER_04]: So it was kind of feeling the tension sometimes.
- 5:05[SPEAKER_04]: We used to advantage and sometimes not.
- 5:07[SPEAKER_04]: You know, it was something in there.
- 5:09[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
- 5:10[SPEAKER_02]: And you got paired down to a duel this time around.
- 5:12[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, we did.
- 5:13[SPEAKER_04]: That was a shared decision.
- 5:15[SPEAKER_04]: Our former guitarist and towards the end of touring, first record.
- 5:20[SPEAKER_04]: which are going to come up with a great idea for how you want it to make this future work and how we did.
- 5:26[SPEAKER_04]: So instead of trying to, you know, sort of trying to see much of those two ideas together, we should separate it from make two different projects.
- 5:33[SPEAKER_02]: So as you're going about this, and I've noticed this lately, now that you're putting out all the publicity photos and getting ready to ramp up, I mean, art is always been the other side of chair left.
- 5:44[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you have the music and then you, you know, when you're putting all this together, is it a persona that you guys are trying to project?
- 5:51[SPEAKER_02]: Is that part of it in the photos, in the videos?
- 5:55[SPEAKER_04]: It's definitely not a persona, I almost wish that I had one to make a little bit easier.
- 6:00[SPEAKER_04]: It's more just trying to find a visual way to represent the character that I feel like we are in the music.
- 6:07[SPEAKER_04]: It's like kind of a fly, kind of playful, kind of sexy, but kind of obtuse and manic.
- 6:14[SPEAKER_04]: At the same time, it's been a really exciting challenge to try and find different ways to access that.
- 6:21[SPEAKER_04]: I think we're actually putting to get some rally working
- 6:26[SPEAKER_04]: or good friend Alejandra as an art director.
- 6:28[SPEAKER_04]: And he has a very similar experience in music and has a huge reaction as we do.
- 6:33[SPEAKER_04]: So it's really nice to have someone else to kind of ideas off all of them and get inspiration from him.
- 6:39[SPEAKER_02]: And we'll be right back right after this.
- 6:41[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back.
- 6:42[SPEAKER_02]: It's Kyle Meredith with Caroline Pullachek.
- 6:46[SPEAKER_02]: Quite a bit of attention off of the video for M&M in Asia.
- 6:50[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's not the first time you guys danced in a video, but it seemed like it definitely brought out the lovers and the haters.
- 6:57[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, we just, we're just fine.
- 6:59[SPEAKER_04]: It was weird because that was the first song that we released off the track, right?
- 7:02[SPEAKER_04]: And that was the first thing that kind of broke the radio silence that we had for about a year and a half, or making the record.
- 7:08[SPEAKER_04]: And I really had a feeling like there was nothing to lose because I kind of felt like we didn't exist anymore.
- 7:13[SPEAKER_04]: But we kind of stopped doing anything publicly for so long that I kind of stopped
- 7:17[SPEAKER_04]: being aware of anyone watching us for caring, so it's kind of like well.
- 7:22[SPEAKER_04]: And I had this idea of taking down in my head for literally about six months that I wanted to do a fine language dance.
- 7:28[SPEAKER_04]: I wanted to make that the different synthesizers sounds, and that's not so like very literal sound gestures.
- 7:35[SPEAKER_04]: And I want to teach some of this, it was an instructional video for American fine language.
- 7:40[SPEAKER_04]: Right before I actually dig in at that idea right as I'm not sure if I'm going to think about the first video.
- 7:45[SPEAKER_04]: My dad completely unrelated showed me about a ballet piece on YouTube from the mid-sixties by a French choreographer and a more efficient job.
- 7:53[SPEAKER_04]: And it completely made my brain explode.
- 7:55[SPEAKER_04]: It's like never had any interesting form of dance ballet or anything like that.
- 7:59[SPEAKER_04]: I was so impressed because I didn't realize it can't be.
- 8:01[SPEAKER_04]: There's no concealing like that but without alien and yet minimal.
- 8:08[SPEAKER_04]: And you're in the ceiling of a video, a second, you're from the sixties from culture YouTube.
- 8:13[SPEAKER_04]: The colors have these kind of holes, those around them.
- 8:16[SPEAKER_04]: I worked, helped her down it was, and I just knew what this is.
- 8:19[SPEAKER_04]: It's genre that I want them in and in, and you should be, it's like a pity, but I wanted to be with this kind of, yes, it's a hard question, can dancing, stuff, but with this one, that was kind of like sixties ballet.
- 8:30[SPEAKER_04]: So, literally the next day after, I showed me that video, I find it, I thought, I shouldn't have been working on the dance, which took you so three months to finish.
- 8:37[SPEAKER_02]: Wow, that's dedication.
- 8:42[SPEAKER_02]: I read an interview at some point in the past year with you that you were saying, you know, obviously you get to travel all over the world, but you never ever get to see it because of the touring schedule.
- 8:52[SPEAKER_02]: Just curious in the downtime between the records have you been able to kind of fix that?
- 8:57[SPEAKER_04]: No, in the downtown, we've done exactly the opposite.
- 9:00[SPEAKER_04]: We've become kind of a little cave people where we travel past from our respective bedrooms to
- 9:08[SPEAKER_04]: You know, there are computer organ carriers, computer, back and forth every day.
- 9:12[SPEAKER_04]: But you know, it's funny because especially we haven't been moving around a lot, but mentally I feel it could be covering a lot of ground or like the user create.
- 9:20[SPEAKER_04]: And we're eventually for that to the part that really exciting.
- 9:23[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
- 9:25[SPEAKER_02]: And is there still going to be an album with violence at some point?
- 9:30[SPEAKER_04]: Well, funny, it definitely won't be with violence, although I do hope to tour it, the more things show it in a mid-Chenior, which I'm really excited about.
- 9:38[SPEAKER_04]: George and I are always kind of messing around on something.
- 9:41[SPEAKER_04]: Actually, it's been a couple of hours ago, we were talking about doing like it's a metal record together.
- 9:47[SPEAKER_04]: That's not foreign to you, the death metal thing, the screaming thing at least.
- 9:50[SPEAKER_04]: I mean, that's kind of where you started, right?
- 10:04[SPEAKER_04]: When I was seventeen I was in a couple new metal bands and I was doing like a really awful way like I would never pay for it.
- 10:10[SPEAKER_04]: It was like I've invested in something like an hospital.
- 10:14[SPEAKER_02]: Oh fantastic.
- 10:15[SPEAKER_02]: I can't wait till the expanded additions come out in twenty years and you're ready to let go of those.
- 10:19[SPEAKER_04]: Oh no, no, no, that's never coming out ever.
- 10:22[SPEAKER_02]: And we'll be right back right after this.
- 10:25[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back.
- 10:25[SPEAKER_02]: It's Kyle and Meredith.
- 10:26[SPEAKER_02]: So now we're going to do part two of this rewind episode.
- 10:30[SPEAKER_02]: This one goes back to twenty seventeen.
- 10:32[SPEAKER_02]: That's when I caught up with Allison Goldfrapp to talk about Goldfrapp's album Silver Eye.
- 10:38[SPEAKER_02]: We talked about why it's signaled a return to electronic sounds, which they had sort of gotten away from as much anyway using synth, but really taking a darker turn that they had done and tracks that that spread out and explored the direction.
- 10:55[SPEAKER_02]: that they really just hadn't taken before.
- 10:57[SPEAKER_02]: It's an album that I still love listening to.
- 10:58[SPEAKER_02]: In fact, I love all the gold frapp ones.
- 11:01[SPEAKER_02]: But this one again from twenty seventeen, it's part two of this rewind episode.
- 11:04[SPEAKER_02]: It's Kyle Meredith with Allison Goldfrapp.
- 11:07[SPEAKER_05]: Hi.
- 11:07[SPEAKER_05]: Hi.
- 11:08[SPEAKER_05]: I'm good.
- 11:08[SPEAKER_05]: How are you?
- 11:09[SPEAKER_02]: Welcome back to the game.
- 11:12[SPEAKER_05]: did I go away?
- 11:13[SPEAKER_02]: I guess you didn't because I've read that you have stayed busy the whole time but of course there's that whole perception from life.
- 11:20[SPEAKER_05]: I know, I know it's funny isn't it?
- 11:23[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 11:24[SPEAKER_05]: Well we talked for a good year and a half after the last album and then yeah I had a little bit of a very we teeny we need little break and then yeah got back to studio but
- 11:38[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, the perception here is that it's been, well, it has been four years since the last time I'm here.
- 11:45[SPEAKER_02]: And it's interesting, you know, when you compare albums, which is probably not fair at all, especially for a group like yours, because you've sort of made a career out of
- 11:55[SPEAKER_02]: you know changing up the game every single time but i don't think you've made as dramatic of a jump as you have for the last three albums especially i mean tells of us was i mean so laid back i don't know if there's right word because there was a lot going on in those songs but you know i mean did during that as you said for a year and a half make you want to get back into something more upbeat electronics as it is
- 12:18[SPEAKER_05]: um well it's funny isn't it um it's not a conscious decision but at the same time it does feel a bit like we kind of rebel
- 12:29[SPEAKER_05]: against the thing we did last, you know, I thought so right word.
- 12:34[SPEAKER_05]: But yeah, it's never a conscious decision, but I mean, I think to be honest, we'd sort of wanted to do something more electronic for a while, but it was just trying to figure out how we were going to do it, because we don't like to repeat ourselves.
- 12:48[SPEAKER_05]: And we kind of wanted to do something a bit like Super Nature, but we didn't want to sort of
- 12:56[SPEAKER_05]: We wanted to explore a slightly different area.
- 12:59[SPEAKER_05]: It took us a while to figure out how to do that.
- 13:03[SPEAKER_05]: When we got back in the studio, we started with a mix of acoustic instruments and electronic staff.
- 13:11[SPEAKER_05]: And then we thought, actually, no, we don't want to do that.
- 13:14[SPEAKER_05]: So it became all electronics.
- 13:17[SPEAKER_05]: So no acoustic drums, no acoustic guitars, nothing, no strings.
- 13:22[SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, when you're working like that because it's really interesting to hear you guys talk about going in there, you know, and from scratch and just starting to build something and then wiping that all the way, I mean,
- 13:32[SPEAKER_02]: you're sort of throwing things away for the sake of the art which you know is completely commendable but does it ever hurt to let some of them go I mean it's it's almost like choosing a direction and maybe you wonder what was down that other path you know at some point whatever you've got to be scary I guess you know because you're kind of your your you don't it doesn't make your life easy
- 13:54[SPEAKER_05]: Because you're kind of, you know, you're sort of reinventing.
- 13:57[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know.
- 13:58[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, no, it's a better.
- 13:59[SPEAKER_05]: I do still think God, yeah, we don't, we don't, we don't make our life easy for ourselves.
- 14:05[SPEAKER_02]: But I mean, it works for us that you don't make it easy for yourselves, though.
- 14:09[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, well, I don't, you know, I'm not interested in a formula.
- 14:15[SPEAKER_05]: kind of pointless really, you know, always want us to attract new things and I like the spontaneity of not really quite knowing what's going to happen or, you know, that's exciting, it's part of, you know, being creative and fun of that.
- 14:32[SPEAKER_02]: That first single anymore, which is great, I started laughing last night when I realized that it's more or less just three chords, right?
- 14:41[SPEAKER_02]: Like that whole phone.
- 14:42[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, very simple, it's very simple.
- 14:44[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, I mean, a synthesizer kind of definitely was one of the things I wanted to try and simplify, sort of more space into the music.
- 14:54[SPEAKER_05]: And I think in past albums we've been, there's always a lot of layers.
- 15:01[SPEAKER_05]: lots of parts, components, the things which is great, but I think it's something that we were quite interested to sort of strip things back.
- 15:11[SPEAKER_05]: The thing is, I think once you know, it's something can work and be very, very simple, and that's a really good place to be, especially when you're dealing with sort of rhythm and, yeah, I mean, you know, who are laughing is really simple.
- 15:28[SPEAKER_05]: I mean, yes, some of the best tunes are, you know, some of the best tunes written are kind of dead simple.
- 15:35[SPEAKER_02]: It's, I mean, it's, I guess it's close to punk rock as you guys get, but I mean, which is unfair.
- 15:40[SPEAKER_02]: There's a lot going on.
- 15:41[SPEAKER_05]: There's something quite so tribal about that kind of simplicity, I think, which is really, you know, pills to some inner basic need.
- 15:53[SPEAKER_02]: I've never heard you, and every video for any more is really beautiful, by the way.
- 15:58[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, thank you.
- 15:59[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 15:59[SPEAKER_05]: Oh, good.
- 16:00[SPEAKER_05]: I'm glad you like it.
- 16:01[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 16:02[SPEAKER_02]: Well, we're still talking about that.
- 16:03[SPEAKER_02]: And I've seen the word and drogenous thrown around quite a bit with that, and I guess that's how to do it with.
- 16:08[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if that's your intention or if that's just the press looking for a word or anything, but I mean, that's something artists have been exploring for a long time.
- 16:15[SPEAKER_05]: That's true.
- 16:17[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, for sure.
- 16:18[SPEAKER_02]: If that was the case, what drew you to it?
- 16:20[SPEAKER_02]: What made you want to explore that?
- 16:22[SPEAKER_05]: Well, I think I always, while when I was a kid, when I was really little, I had a crush on a girl at school who looked through Spanish.
- 16:31[SPEAKER_05]: I went to a conference school.
- 16:34[SPEAKER_05]: And she had that sort of tomboy look which found really appealing.
- 16:41[SPEAKER_05]: And, you know, I had a crush on Joan Chair and then I remember Mark Bowen, I had a real crush on him because he kind of, you know, and then I was obsessed with Prince because he was, I think I've always been fascinated by, you know, in Bowie and, you know, women, men who sort of somehow are a mix of lots of things.
- 17:01[SPEAKER_05]: That aesthetic has always appealed to me.
- 17:03[SPEAKER_05]: I find it really interesting and beautiful.
- 17:06[SPEAKER_05]: And I think I've always had an admiration for women who don't have any hair.
- 17:12[SPEAKER_05]: I think there's a part of me that wish that I wish I had the nerve to shape my head.
- 17:19[SPEAKER_05]: You can do it.
- 17:22[SPEAKER_05]: I used to have pretty anyway.
- 17:24[SPEAKER_05]: There's a combination of lots of things and then as sort of
- 17:29[SPEAKER_05]: kind of a few film references that I was very interested in, the holy mountain, for instance, and that kind of sci-fi.
- 17:37[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know that it sort of, it has a lot of, it resonates something.
- 17:43[SPEAKER_05]: There's a lot of things about it that appeal to me, and it's so strong and striking, and yeah, I think it's sort of very beautiful in a kind of quite sort of rather brutal way.
- 17:56[SPEAKER_05]: I don't know, yeah, I love it.
- 17:58[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I'd like to, I mean personally, I don't know if we're getting closer to that future, the endogenous future, but I certainly hope we are.
- 18:04[SPEAKER_02]: You know, whether it happens and not, and I see it in the younger generations more and more, especially.
- 18:09[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah.
- 18:10[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, and I think, you know, girls not wanting to have so much, just being wanting to be rid of all those things that they're like,
- 18:18[SPEAKER_05]: Hold us back sometimes and feel trapped by as well, you know hair and makeup and I don't know I suppose that this there's lots of things to yeah find it appealing lots of reasons
- 18:32[SPEAKER_02]: Well, again, it's made for a really fantastic record.
- 18:35[SPEAKER_02]: All of it's well beyond that.
- 18:37[SPEAKER_02]: I love that you've done it again and that you're back and I appreciate you taking these this moment with me today too.
- 18:43[SPEAKER_05]: You're very welcome.
- 18:44[SPEAKER_05]: I enjoyed it.
- 18:45[SPEAKER_05]: Thank you.
- 18:46[SPEAKER_05]: All right.
- 18:46[SPEAKER_02]: It's really nice talking to you to take care.
- 18:47[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, but I have a good day.
- 18:49[SPEAKER_05]: Bye.
- 18:49[SPEAKER_05]: Bye.
- 18:50[SPEAKER_02]: There you have it, rewind with Allison Goldfrapp and Caroline Polichek.
- 18:54[SPEAKER_02]: Thanks to you for checking out the episode, hit that subscribe button before you get out.
- 18:57[SPEAKER_02]: So you can keep up with all the interviews that I put out every week, Spotify, Apple podcast, NPR, WFPK.org, consequence, YouTube for the video versions or anywhere you get your podcast, you can subscribe to Kyle Meredith with.
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- 20:03[SPEAKER_02]: I do hope you like and follow along, and that does it for another edition.
- 20:06[SPEAKER_02]: I'm Kyle Meredith.
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