Buy POLIÇA’s album “Give You The Ghost” - Vinyl | MP3 | CD
Minnesota locals POLIÇA are not for everybody. For example, if you’re a lyrics person, this is probably not the band for you, as half of their lyrics are highly unintelligible, to me at least. Likewise if you like your music full of lush instrumentation with an abundance of guitars, strings or pianos, since the band builds their songs on drums, bass and vocals. Oh, and if you dislike Auto Tune, even in the slightest, you should probably stay far, far away. I think that last one is pretty self-explanatory.
Fortunately for me, though, I don’t have any particular issues with any of these things, so when I first stumbled upon POLIÇA it was love at first listen. Of course my first encounter with the band was “Lay Your Cards Out”, which isn’t really an accurate representation of their debut album, “Give You The Ghost”, in the slightest, but it does give an excellent of example of just how good the band could be. “Lay Your Cards Out” is much more sensual than most of the rest of the album, thanks to the lush synths that adorn the mix. The song settles into a groove from the beginning, with Channy Casselle’s multiple heavily auto-tuned vocals carrying the song melodically. Occasionally, a frantic drum roll breaks the groove, hinting at the final minute of ecstasy that is to come, in which everything lets loose and Bon Iver‘s Mike Noyce takes over vocally.
It’s worth mentioning the drums, because throughout the entirety of “Give You The Ghost” the double drum kit POLIÇA employs creates for some fantastic moments. “Dark Star”, for instance, gathers much of its intensity from the drums. In fact, with such sparse instrumentation, the rhythm section becomes extremely important and is able to respond fantastically. Such is the case on “I See My Mother”, in which a bass line straight out of the 80′s is just as important as the vocal melody, or on “Fist Teeth Money” in which the bass and drums combination really steals the show, settling into an undeniable groove.
“Wandering Star”, which coincidentally also features Mike Noyce, is another album highlight. Even through the layers of Auto Tune, it’s almost the only time on the whole album where Channy Casselle shows some sign of emotion, as she sings “when the day is done / and I lay me down / I sit alone in my lonely bed / and I think about / the day we had / and it makes me sad ’cause you’re gone”. Leaving the slightly elemental lyrics aside, the track makes for somewhat of an emotive moment and the more hushed instrumentation suits the song nicely. For me, though, Mike Noyce’s vocal mumblings at the end are somewhat superfluous, not really adding much to the story.
POLIÇA are best when the rhythm section is most present, and the closing track “Leading To Death”, is just another example. The groove the bass and drum kits hit is phenomenal, and the synths the band chooses to add manage to fill up a lot of the mix, to great effect though. And as Casselle sings about the “days, hours [and] hours” leading up to “your” (and the album’s) death (end in the case of the album), the one of the album’s greatest flaws comes out. There’s nothing wrong with “Leading To Death” itself, though, on the contrary, it’s one of the stronger songs on the album. Instead, it’s not hard to come to the realization that things have felt, overall, slightly synthetic.
Take almost any track on “Give You The Ghost” and you’ll end up with a lot to like, and in some cases love. One of the things missing, though, is some emotional connection. Through the layers of effects and the often-times sparse mix due to the separation of low (bass/drums) and high frequencies (vocals) there seems to be something missing. To some, that may be a deal breaker, and I admit that at times I wish there were something more to offer, but as a whole “Give You The Ghost” serves as a snapshot of a time in which a lot of artists are pushing boundaries. The album will no doubt sound dated in a few year’s time, but while things like this are still trendy I’m a fan.
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