caroline - caroline 2
Rough Trade
London based eight-piece caroline return for album number two. The avant-folk-post-rockers will push the more patient listener to the edge as the slow-to-unfurl worlds ebb-and-flow at a snails pace. With opening track, and lead single, "Total Euphoria" being maybe the most forward and active track on the album, caroline 2 can feel like a puzzle that's in the process of figuring itself out.
"Total euphoria" opens up caroline 2. The winding-up and winding-down of "Total euphoria"; the splitting of the atom at the 2'48" mark; life flourishing once again through mournful strings; the gorgeous "taking it in your stride..." of the collective voices feels like a hand on the back, a hand on the soul, a hand wherever it may be needed. "Total Euphoria" is one of the best songs of the year, without question. The best of the decade debate is there if you want to go there. 'Subtle' and 'nuance' are words that appendage caroline's music - they go hand-in-hand.
"Song two" turns down the more active musicianship for something of a breathing entity. Flower-like, it grows, blooms, unfurls. The airy vastness of the material plumes out of itself.
The refrains of "It always has been/ happens. This always happens. It always will be." on the Caroline Polachek collaboration "Tell me I never knew that" bolsters a life-affirming quality, for both the upsides and downsides.
caroline craft pieces of sound rather than song. It feels like a level above understanding, a level above enjoyment - it's a deeper feeling, out of the reach of measurability, a rung above on the spiral of everyday consciousness.
The thumping bass in the background of "When I get home" can feel out of place, or even a mistake, a piece missed in the final puzzle. Although it does cut out right at the 3'10" mark as the female duh-duh-duh's come into the fray - a peaceful, Motherly figure calming the environment, perhaps.
"When I get home, I might just ask what you need too. I might just ask when I get home."
caroline make very "of the moment" music; weather-like and ever-changing. Showing it to friends and family may be off the cards. It will find them when the time's right, and on their own terms and their own path. Simply put, that day may never come. The music will wait patiently anyhow.
"U R UR ONLY ACHING" takes the approach of Liverpool's Courting and brings auto-tune on board - a card that I didn't see coming from caroline's deck. "Two riders down" features something of a wobbly, deep-in-the-treacle, narrator-like voice. David Attenborough recovering after a weekend on the town. There are many odd-ball moments within the 39-minute runtime of the album. A funny thing to note as the album is as spacious as it is active. It's a very sonically secretive experience.
The band have certainly upped their game with regards to fulfilling what they seem to have set out to do - what they set out to do feels different each time the album is returned to, a sign of enigmatic flavour.
Awkward strands of musical creativity; paths ventured down in strange dreams; moments of fleeting splendour; windows into other worlds, caroline, caroline 2, can be hard to grasp. Like sonic think pieces to which there may or may not be a payoff to the thought exercise, these tracks often exist out of time and space. The lyrics on closing track "beautiful ending", to me, allude to this timeless, spaceless mindset: "not everything needs to even out." Sometimes things exist, and that's enough. caroline 2 is a reminder that not everything has to make sense, not everything has to make ends meet.
Cut from an ethereal cloth, caroline 2 exhibits a boundless spirit. If you're looking for something a little out-there, a little on the edge of something else, then you're in the right place.
caroline 2 is out now via Rough Trade.
