Moths seem like an error in evolution. Instead of morphing into the bright symmetry of a butterfly, a caterpillar becomes a dull and monochromatic flicker, flying in meaningless orbits around a light source and sometimes annihilating itself in it. There’s something familiar in this pattern, though; it resembles something as exposed and human as falling in love. "We liked the idea of the moth as a metaphor for vulnerability," Caroline Polachek of Chairlift said in an interview with Pitchfork last year. "There are risks everywhere, but it doesn’t question them."
"Crying in Public," one of the advance singles from the duo’s new album, Moth, is about being so overwhelmed with emotion, with the feeling of falling in love, that the narrator starts crying on the train. "Each autumn leaf and passing breath," Polachek sings. "Each antidote to sudden death." The song captures the near-panicky edge to this feeling, the moment your environment becomes so charged with possibility you find yourself noticing everything: birds, breakdancers, light pouring in through trees. It's too much, and its too-muchness makes you feel small, like an exposed nerve in a vast world. On Moth, Polachek and her bandmate Patrick Wimberly aim to embrace this too-muchness, expanding their sound and opening themselves up, and the result is the indie pop band’s most emotionally generous and consistent effort yet.
"Crying in Public" is the song on Moth that most resembles their earlier work, a kind of flowing and gelatinous synth pop that feels dense and enveloping, the texture of feeling itself. It seems related to the buoyancy of "Bruises," from their debut, or to "I Belong in Your Arms," from 2012’s Something, but while those records described the cellular rush of love, "Crying" describes love’s ability to gently create inner and outer space. There’s also a groove buried in the texture of the song, a kind of irregular flutter at its center, as if Chairlift are deliberately trying to simulate heart arrhythmia.
It’s in this often-fidgety percussion that Moth distinguishes itself from Chairlift’s other records. Sometimes it feels as if the drums were sketched out first and the songs built organically around them. Lead single "Ch-Ching" forms itself explicitly around handclaps alternating with glassy and brittle drums. It’s both animated and oddly inflexible, and the effect is disconcerting, like watching a skeleton learn how to walk. "Show U Off" inherits its groove from Busta Rhymes’ "Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Could See" and fills its blank spaces in with nervous post-disco guitar.
Sometimes this instability intensifies their compositions. Closer "No Such Thing as Illusion" feels so empty that it sort of works like an incomplete jigsaw puzzle, its pockets of nothing enhancing the something. "Polymorphing" evolves through at least three different arrangements. The horn charts are possibly the most striking feature of the record; saxophones unreel in trembling ribbons or sprout from the songs in abrupt, harmonic blooms. It’s only when Moth loses this tailored sense of groove that it starts to feel shapeless; "Ottawa to Osaka" melts in and out of coherence, and "Unfinished Business" is only motivated by an irregular, clustering snare and Polachek’s vocal, which approaches notes as if they were mapped coordinates.
Sometimes the arrangements verge on fussy; there’s an airless quality to "Romeo," which is both distracting and appropriate, as the song’s about running, exhaling instead of inhaling. Polachek sings from the perspective of Atalanta, an elusive character from Greek mythology, and the drums underpinning the song give it the rhythm of one of Atalanta’s footraces, to which she would challenge her potential suitors in order to avoid marriage. "I’m going to run/ ‘Til you give me a reason to stop/ To fall on my knees," Polachek sings, as if challenging someone to surprise her, as if she’s allowing herself the capacity for surprise.
For all of these tics and irregularities, Moth is overall Chairlift's best and smoothest long-player statement. As much as the singles on Something thrilled, it struggled for coherence from song to song. The songs on Moth feel related and extroverted, pulled together by a common purpose. They have a charming asymmetry, they drift in sometimes oblique and irregular patterns. This is pop that wants to show you what it’s made of.
