Caroline Polachek Wants You to Feel Something

Inside the globe-trotting, rave-going, expectationdefying sessions for the avant-pop star's new LP

- BRITTANY SPANOS

CAROLINE POL ACHEK

Standing in the KITCHEN at a house party in Rome not long ago, Caroline Polachek heard a song that struck her deeply. "Ti Sento" ("I Hear You"), the 1985 single by Italian pop group Matia Bazar, is peak Eighties Europop kitsch: sparkling synth-pop paired with big, operatic vocals.

Polachek thinks a lot about divas (she loves Celine Dion for "how she exists as an icon, and how pure and comforting and solid that is"), and the performance by Matia Bazar's singer, Antonella Ruggiero, became a major touchstone for her. "She's just giving everything, and the song climbs up higher into these other keys," Polachek says. "There is this feeling in her vocal performance that her eyes are gonna fucking pop out of her skull, it's so intense. It's like she's being electrocuted. That song kind of became a flashlight for me in terms of where I wanted to go and what I wanted to try."

Polachek hopes to have her own diva moment, of sorts, with her upcoming album, Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, due in February. Polachek wanted to create something physical, songs that can spread through your whole body and make you feel the way she felt when she first heard Matia Bazar. "I want to push back against ephemerality," she says.