Caroline Polachek - "Dang"

Caroline Polachek follows-up her excellent record from earlier in the year with another hyper-pop gem that acts as victory lap for her remarkable year.

The way Caroline Polachek approaches her music can be confounding in a lot of ways. Industrial beats hit hard while electronic pings ricochet across the melody, never quite creating the sense of rhythm you'd expect, but one that still calls you in. Her voice floats with the occasional tumble, and on this track a scream, as it bobs along against sharp blasts of crushing beats. The track's construction is striking, like a physical object that was shaped and sculpted to fit around her vocals, at times building things up before crumbling them down to rubble the next. It jerks the listener around, giving a discombobulated sense while still making it feel relatively close to a traditional pop song. Or at least as close as Polachek comes anyway. When she performed the song on the Late Show this week, she used her appearance to emulate a TED Talk powerpoint presentation, highlighting her unique and captivating performance skills to also enhance the song's most intriguing elements. Throughout, electronics whip and zip along, adding distinct nuances to her distinct charm and songwriting approach. After delivering one of the most mesmerizing pop records of the year, Polachek shows that it's not just a flash-in-the-pan moment and that her songwriting still leaves plenty to desire and explore.