REVIEW: caroline - caroline 2
it's summer and everything is passing by really fast.
Take an old-fashioned, served neat—sweet, smooth, complex—this is the impetus of caroline's sophomore record, caroline 2. Where caroline 2 differs most from the group’s debut is in terms of polish. The form of their songwriting remains expansive, covering a wide range of post-rock and folk with a few modern production quirks to boot, but they have excised most of the meandering fluff and dead air this time around for a more streamlined, melody-focused experience, even going so far as to invite the acrobatic Caroline Polachek on board for the group’s catchiest swing at folk-pop to date ("Tell me I never knew that"). But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
"Total euphoria" kicks the record off with two jangled electric guitars acting as free agents, convulsing repeatedly with no apparent heed for uniformity. Yet, as the off-piste guitars combine with Jasper Llewellyn’s soothing voice, distracted drums, trombone, and bass clarinet, the cacophony never eschews a sense of welcome; that is, until a violin rears its head, triggering a white-hot mushroom cloud of distortion that sends a thousand acres of grassland into momentary limbo before the racket of post-country bliss bleeds back into life. It's a bold flaunt of confidence, setting such a high bar in the first song like that. The band is forced to find more understated ways to sate your attention for the remainder of the album, and they mostly succeed by their pure aptitude for crafting entangled and bittersweet arrangements.
Texture is a key focus of caroline's music, and it can't be stressed enough how crucial Hugh Aynsley's drum work is to giving these textures the appropriate depth. To give each of caroline’s eight members their respective flowers would be like solving an elaborate game of “guess who” as their individual contributions are varied and plentiful from track to track, but Aynsley acts as a consistent sounding board for an otherwise restless stable, always keeping the context of mood in check. On "Song two", the drums patter like raindrops on a steel roof, swelling on the cymbals ever so slightly during moments of suppressed intensity while Casper Hughes and Mike O’Malley play doe-eyed harmonies on the guitar. On "When I get home", just a solitary pulse of the kick drum accompanies the melody until the arrangement shifts and grows intertwined with crumpled layers of orchestrated noise, creaking like roots of a vine to the sound of cymbals. These wooden textures reach new heights in "Two riders down", which progresses into a droning soundscape of violin and guitars while the drums palpitate with a climactic sense of urgency. I also can’t gloss over how much life Alex McKenzie’s bass clarinet brings to the low end of these songs; it’s a unique touch that you don’t often hear from other wind-curious acts.
Despite the array of strings, horns, woodwinds, and the often maximal arrangements they coalesce into, caroline 2 maintains a somewhat frustratingly evasive footprint, like a handful of sand that you just can’t maintain the volume of. “U R UR ONLY ACHING” leans briefly away from the group’s orchestral strengths for a more straightforward rock approach that just feels stunted in comparison to the opening run, and songs like "Coldplay cover" and "Beautiful ending" feature quieter and more sparse arrangements that, while pretty, tend to sneak by in the foliage without much notice. By the time the album closes, those echoes of explosion from the opening song are no longer felt, but maybe that's the point—the birds have all cleared the blast zone. The closing song does proclaim, “Not everything has to even out,” but I reckon it wouldn’t hurt.
7.5/10
this is a very interesting listen and i'm not sure what to make of it. i kind of want it to be more like soothing but it's also so full of character that it probably shouldn't be? either way, excellent rev, i think i am in complete agreement!
Nice!! “Two Riders Down” is probably my song of the year so far.