Three years after their sensational debut album caroline return with caroline 2, a stunning blend of artificial and analogue production with the emotional turmoil we all go through daily. I sat down to listen to this album in the sunshine, excited to let the album wash over my ears and it did not disappoint.
On ‘Total Euphoria’ atmospheres collide in a sonic explosion, uplifting, forgiving and a space to overcome adversities. There’s a pushing and a pulling of sound, different swirling instrumentation in rhythmic loops blended together with the emotive vocals, ‘Did we ever talk about how you left them?’. A violin grounds the listener through the noise holding everything dramatically together. ‘Total Euphoria’ is a perfect chaos of instrumentation and vocal dynamics.
‘Please don’t be unkind’ is the catalyst of all the emotion in ‘Song 2’, sombre, tired, almost like waiting up in the morning after a long day. This alt rock production is a moment of sunshine in the grey and how the little things make up each day, with the beginning of the lyrical motif of ‘Now I know your mind’ which runs throughout this entire album.
‘Tell Me I Never Knew’, which features Caroline Polachek, is a melting point of voices, harmonies and flicking soundscapes that build into a sensational wave of emotion. The repeated vocal lines change subtly as the song goes along, with the callback ‘Now I know your mind’ allowing each band member to bring their own personality to the fore. Polachek’s influence is felt throughout in a fantastic collaboration of Caroline and caroline.
It leads into the beautiful softness of ‘When I Get Home’, which feels like getting back from a night out while the party is still heard down the street. The marriage of auto tune with singing is gripping, while the sudden change and pizzicato of the violin with the vocals and percussion feels like thoughts fluttering around, and trying to catch them before they float away – captivating, anxious and fulfilling.
The pop punk, grunge tones of ‘U R Only Aching’ comes as a fantastic surprise, with the production of this track the most impressive on the album. Somehow the instruments feel artificial, yet that only makes it more compelling – the natural and the artificial morphing in the music.
Beginning with a strong, stabbing guitar, ‘Coldplay Cover’ feels like you have walked into a band rehearsal. You can hear ‘yourself’ walking into the next room, where a different song is playing but you can still hear the first. It is another blending of the reality and the artificial – the simplicity and creativity that is the key to caroline.
The closing track ‘Beautiful Ending’ is exactly that. The song feels like a synthetic ocean, the synths crashing and waning at the shore, the strings dancing along in perfect harmony. The finger-picked guitar brings out so much depth before the closing lyric, ‘Not everything needs to even out’ – a truth we all need to be reminded of sometimes.
This record begs questions around art and music in the modern day and how we can utilise what we have to create beauty and space wherever we are. caroline 2 feels like a constantly moving machine that lives in the open blue sky – the artificial meeting the human and blending them together because they coexist constantly, exploring how we can use that to push ourselves creatively and in the everyday.