Caroline Polachek, former frontperson of late 2000s indie-pop group Chairlift, is making her solo career debut after years of relative silence: Polachek’s forthcoming debut solo record under her own name, Pang, is slated for release Friday. In anticipation for her big release, Polachek has been putting forth several singles to give fans a preview. Her latest, “Look At Me Now,” is her most emotional yet.
“Look At Me Now” opens with resounding guitar and wistful vocals. Polachek looks back to a past relationship in the single and wonders where her life would be if she’d never left: “Wrote myself a letter / Just a single question / ‘When you finally get this, where will you be? / Will you be a shipwreck or a star / falling for a boy who doesn’t play guitar?'”
In a statement, Polachek said her latest single was a way for her to experiment with a more subdued sound, saying, “‘Look At Me Now’ is the ‘diary entry’ of the album. I wrote it last year while processing a mix of guilt, self-destructiveness, and hope. I’ve never really worked with acoustic guitar before, and in ‘Look At Me Now,’ it’s an umbilical connection to the Lilith-Fair-era artists I grew up listening to, like Jewel and Sarah McLaughlan, whose wistfully adult lyrics I pretended to understand at the time and now do.”
While Polachek proves she can write a strong reflective ballad with “Look At Me Now,” the singer put forth several other pumped-up singles like “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings” and “Ocean of Tears.”
Listen to “Look At Me Now” above.
Pang is out October 18 via Sony/Columbia. Pre-order it here.
