The reception in Amsterdam said a lot about the hype surrounding the tall Polachek, dressed in a crop top and largely transparent cycling shorts: opening song 'Welcome To My Island' was already sung so full that you wouldn't think it had only been out a week (well, the single was out a few months earlier, but still). There was a crackling chemical reaction between Polachek and the audience, and that while on stage - although very charismatic - she also had something aloof, with her steely looks and the somewhat rehearsed movements. Towards the end, that stiff shell broke open for a moment, when the light came on briefly, she took a good look at her audience and was moved.
She filled a third of the evening with songs from her first album
Pang (2019), such as the title track and the strange 'Door', which she performed a lot more intensely live (no less strange). But it was the material from that new album – five balls in this newspaper (
) – with which Polachek capitalized on the buzzing hype. Such as the rhythmically clever 'Sunset', where her brought guitarist could shine, the pleasantly bouncing 'Bunny is a Rider' and also 'Fly To You', a song she sings on the album with Grimes and Dido, which now sounded with Paradiso as an additional voice.
She sang the song that accompanied the cumbersome dream narration (
), 'Parachute', bathed in smoke and echoed beautifully by the way. She kept it very small and delicate, accurately directing her voice to all angles she wanted without losing power. "Go on, take me, I'm not afraid to drown", it sounded in inimitable inflections. It almost had something religious, but then an alien variant. (
) There is little on earth that sounds quite like Caroline Polachek.