To the outside observer, Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek had an identity crisis over the last year. She was playing secret shows and debuting new material under increasingly inventive, singer-songwriterly pseudonyms: Kimsin Kreft, Theora Vorbis (an A/V pun), and most fancifully, Ramona Lisa, the name under which she’s presented her solo debut, Arcadia. Chairlift’s sophomore LP, 2012's Something, possessed some excellent singles, and the Polachek-written “No Angel” ended up on Beyoncé's recent self-titled album, but despite all this upward momentum, Arcadia is a quiet curiosity, a quirky side project that’s mostly a labor of love.
Arcadia was composed and recorded entirely on tour and on laptop with MIDI instruments, but the music’s not too recognizably lo-fi or idiosyncratic, especially when compared to some of Chairlift’s past work. There are reprises and recurring motifs that lend Arcadia a conceptual coherence, but Polachek’s songwriting is as broad as it is pared-down. The record works in two modes: for more abstract material like “Hissing Pipes at Dawn (They're Playing Our Song)”, which is, yes, a impressionistic sound-painting of hissing pipes at dawn, there are tracks like “Lady’s Got Gills” and “Backwards and Upwards,” which resemble Chairlift album cuts that were allowed to melt around their chorus sections.
Despite their meandering tendencies, the songs on Arcadia sound neither tossed-off nor incomplete, and are surprisingly sticky at times. “Backwards and Upwards” is a driftier sequel to Something’s “I Belong in Your Arms” as an insistent organ hook and bass burble are paired with love-dazed vocals; “Lady’s Got Gills” is as playful as its title suggests, its synthesized instruments scattered through the busy beat like stones. These moments are where Polachek’s sense of humor comes through: “Getaway Ride” is a charming bit about arson and fanciful theft, and you can hear little deadpan nudges and winks in Polachek's delivery. Arcadia's introspective cuts are mostly effective as well, particularly the pastel waltz “Dominic,” which comes and goes as drowsily as the “perfect disaster” of a fling described in the song. Like much of Arcadia, "Dominic" is “pastoral” in the sense that it uses nature—fields, pale mornings-after—as an incidental backdrop for stories that tend toward the small and personal.
Arcadia tends to lean instrumental and abstract, interspersed with field recordings that were inspired by Polachek’s traveling through Rome and wanting to recreate what she saw out the windows. The results are warm and almost meditative: synth pads that evoke sunbeams, choral multitracking that sounds like General MIDI voice patches. There are referents for this, some expected and some not; Polachek is an avowed fan of cult singer-songwriter Virginia Astley—specifically, of Hope in a Darkened Heart, her collaboration with Japan’s David Sylvian and Ryuichi Sakamoto—as well as Japanese artist Mishio Ogawa, and their watercolor art-pop is a clear, audible influence.
But Arcadia evokes other artists' work, too, from ambitious composers like Julia Holter or Lucrecia Dalt, to more workaday ambient artists like Sleepthief in his less trip-hop moments, to Miriam Stockley (who coincidentally has her own “Arcadia”), to any number of bedroom-produced singer/songwriters. The album is an interesting, almost peculiarly personal mix of sounds, one that almost seems underdeveloped and unlikely to win Polachek any new fans. As an outlet for Polachek’s songwriting, though, it suggests there's more interesting work yet to come from her.
