Since Poliça first gained traction within the early 2010s, vocalist and synth participant Channy Leaneagh has been their franchise participant, doing the lion’s share of press and standing within the highlight throughout reside exhibits and movies. On the Minneapolis synth-pop group’s newest album, Insanity, there’s a shift: Leaneagh’s swooping voice is much less central than it was on 2020’s When We Keep Alive, an album that mixed ruminative lyrics about damage and restoration with preparations that felt slightly too slick and mechanical. Insanity flips that strategy. The instrumentation is extra laid again, however the vocals—at all times a key a part of Poliça songs—obtain a surreal, futuristic sheen.
Insanity makes outstanding use of Allovers, an “anthropomorphic manufacturing instrument” designed by producer Ryan Olson (additionally Leanagh’s husband) and Seth Rosetter. In 2019, the pair included it right into a MASS MoCA sound set up that remodeled a museum constructing right into a form of dwelling instrument, producing music primarily based on the idle chatter and actions of patrons. On Insanity, it blends the percussion with the swelling synths to create an uncanny valley high quality—too natural to be digital, however too robotic to be analog. What might need been a stack of synths and drums on an earlier Poliça file now has an unpredictable rhythmic and sonic variance, just like the acquainted but weird refractions of artist Alexander Mordvintsev’s DeepDream expertise.
The usage of Allovers results in some fascinating textural moments, just like the oscillating, tinny ding behind the neo-soul groove of “Blood” or the guttural gurgling beneath “Away.” Usually, nonetheless, Insanity plods greater than the band’s finest work and doesn’t make as novel use of Ben Ivascu and Drew Christopherson’s twin drummer setup. Essentially the most musically fascinating Poliça data, like 2016’s United Crushers, balanced moments of atmosphere with jagged, uptempo anthems that invited dancing. At simply seven songs, Insanity devotes practically half its runtime to burbling ballads that lack construction, denying the catharsis of these profession peaks.
Insanity is billed as a “companion piece” to When We Keep Alive, an album partially impressed by Leaneagh’s restoration from a debilitating fall that reshaped her perspective. Not one of the lyrics right here hit with the identical stage of urgency or depth, though “Fountain,” with its description of a tumultuous relationship, comes closest. (“Don’t you calm me once I communicate/I’ll by no means be that weak,” Leaneagh warns.) In early interviews, Leaneagh defined her resistance to being perceived as a singer-songwriter, claiming to focus much less on enunciation than conveying feelings, and this file makes her writing really feel secondary to the music.
