“I don’t want to jinx it, but I have a good feeling this will go to Hillary Clinton,” says Chairlift’s Caroline Polachek on the morning of Tuesday November 8, having just returned home from the voting booth.
Of course, history will prove her wrong – within 24 hours Donald J. Trump will officially become the President-elect of the United States – but one can’t fault Polachek for her optimism.
After all, a kind of wide-eyed, unabashed kindness has been the key to the Chairlift sound for years now, ever since the then-three-piece released Does You Inspire You back in 2008, an album anchored by the eminently lovable, chart-topping single ‘Bruises’. Sure, things have changed in the years since – founding member Aaron Pfenning has moved on to other projects, leaving only Polachek and her friend and colleague Patrick Wimberly, and the band’s sound has veered away from its stripped-back electro beginnings and begun to more fervently embrace pop sensibilities.
But the warmth that marked out early Chairlift releases is still as present as ever, as it is in Polachek’s voice as she eagerly begins to discuss the band’s upcoming tour cycle. “I’m very excited to go to Australia and Asia because it’s been three years since we’ve been there,” she says. “I can’t wait.”
Indeed, Polachek is a performer who loves touring more than most, although she does admit that the rigours of playing shows can sometimes wear her down a little. “When we’re on tour and we’re playing every day and we’re travelling every day, yes it gets tiring, but it’s also lots of fun, because we’re playing quite regularly,” she says.
“It’s when we fly in and out for shows that it really wears me out. Because then it’s like two days of travelling for one show. I find it’s difficult to get back into the rhythm then of being productive when I get back home. So I find it’s easier to tour, hit it really hard, or not tour at all. The hardest is the in-between phase. But I can’t complain – I’m very lucky to have this job. So I’m very grateful.”
As anyone who has borne witness to a Chairlift show will attest, Polachek is an accomplished, strikingly natural performer. There’s no artifice to her onstage persona, and so expertly managed is her time in front of a crowd that it often seems as though she is affording every single member of the audience equal attention. A lot of that comes from Polachek’s habit of actively seeking out individuals in the crowd to sing to, and she is a musician constantly fascinated by those who come to see her.
“I watch faces throughout the show, and I’ll sometimes find people in the audience that I’m sort of interested or curious about, and I’ll check back on them over the course of the show,” she says. “Like, maybe it’s someone that looks like they’re having a really good time or a really bad time, or someone who looks really emotional, or someone who seems really bored. So I’ll find these characters and continually check back on them.”
Such tricks of the trade don’t just form naturally, mind you, and Polachek has to work hard at the performative aspect of her craft. “Beyond soundchecking and getting all our gear and lighting set up, I take about an hour to get dressed,” she says. “I’ll tend to warm up as I’m getting dressed too – although on a good day, if I have time, I’ll start warming up hours before we go onstage.
“But the real thing for me is just about not talking. If we’re in a city with friends that I haven’t seen for a long time, I sort of screw myself out of having a good voice that night because I’ll talk a lot. That really wears me out. So for me the big thing is just separating myself from the group and going somewhere to be quiet. That helps me the most … more so now than eight years ago when we started touring, I really put the music first. That’s my priority.”
That’s not to say Polachek doesn’t have to stare down the spectre of stage fright, and combating her nerves plays an essential part in the process of performing. “I have found that I’m usually quite nervous before we go onstage and during the first song,” she says. “It can be particularly scary if I know that there are people in the crowd, particularly other artists that I know and I’m a fan of. That makes me the most nervous. But as soon as that first song is out of the way, then it’s better.”
Polachek does have an additional and distinct way of making sure she can give herself fully to the audience – one that involves a mind trick so quintessentially Chairlift in its touching oddness that it’s genuinely quite surprising the idea hasn’t turned up in one of the band’s songs yet.
“If I’m having a hard time connecting with the audience, I’ll sometimes just imagine that they’re all brains,” Polachek says. “That they’re all just, like, hovering brains. And then I’ll just sing for the brains.” She laughs. “It [works] on a very sensual level – I just think about the flesh of all these brains, and what I can do to make all these brains happy.”
Moth is outnow through Columbia/Sony; and Chairlift play atMetro TheatreonSunday December 4.
