Prior to the release of their debut album, caroline were something of a mystery. Signing to the legendary Rough Trade Records without a single to their name, the band only released two songs before that record truly introduced them to the world. They played with a pretty simple formula on it. First they laid down a backbone, usually a simple musical phrase or riff that would be repeated ad infinitum. Then start building atop it: add strings swooping in and out between notes, free drum solos, spindly guitar riffs straight off a Bill Orcutt record, incidental noise. Spinning these simple component parts into everything from folky ballads to improvised flights of fancy, caroline was a fascinating sprawl that explored the possibilities of their sound. It’s followup hones their distinctive musical vocabulary into something razor sharp.
Opener “Total Euphoria” is the first taste of the band’s new direction. Instruments come in one by one: a strummed guitar, then another one and some drums. Soon a few sets of vocals. For a moment these individual parts seem to gel together into something resembling a traditional song, but they drift apart just as quickly. At one point it seems to implode into static only to rebuild itself moments later. Though it’s strangely catchy, it’s ultimately this continual push and pull that animates the entire track, eventually building to a pure moment of release worthy of the track’s title. The rest of the album largely follows suit. Whether they’re crafting bangers from the uncanny valley (see the Caroline Polachek-featuring “Tell me I never knew that”) or bit-crushed ballads (“U R UR ONLY ACHING”), they seem to thrive by finding the tension between experimental composition and pop bliss.
Most of the lyrics on caroline 2 consist of phrases or images that emerged from collective improvisational exercises. They often seem to allude to some specific tension without spelling out the details, building weight through repetition. On one track they repeatedly ask “did we ever talk about how you left them?”; though we get no resolution, the instrumentals underline the heaviness of the question. While they contemplate whether to ask an unspecified question when they arrive home (“When I get home”), the halting melody behind it seems to point to some deep sadness. The band seem to paint deep emotional truths with each sighed word and plucked string, leaving enough ambiguity for the listener to project themselves into it. This is ultimately the band’s super power: no matter how technically or conceptually dazzling their music may be, it always feels deeply human.