Caroline Polachek: Pang [CAROLINE POLACHEK LLC]

Why you'll love it

This edition comes with a giant double-sided lyric poster. Pang was met with critical acclaim, and "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings" went viral long after it first came out.

This edition

• Double-sided lyric poster

About the album

Caroline Polachek had already lived a few musical lives before this one: co-founder of the Brooklyn indie pop duo Chairlift (the sleeper hit "Bruises" was theirs), a solo album as Ramona Lisa, another as CEP, and songwriting for Beyoncé. Pang is the first record under her own name, and it sounds like someone who knows exactly where she wants to go.

She wrote and produced it herself, with Danny L Harle (of the PC Music crowd) as executive producer, and the result is pop with art-school bones. "The Gate" opens in a hush, the title track glides on a pulsing synth, "Door" builds an ornate hallway of sound, and "Ocean Of Tears" and "Hit Me Where It Hurts" glitter. Then there's "So Hot You're Hurting My Feelings," a sly, breezy earworm that found a whole new audience online. She grew up singing in choirs and playing a Yamaha keyboard her father gave her, and you can hear both in that clear, acrobatic voice.

Pang set the stage for 2023's Desire, I Want To Turn Into You and her run as a critics' darling. The poster has every lyric on it, which saves a great deal of awkward guessing at karaoke.

Also at Kops: more Caroline Polachek on vinyl · browse Pop

Tracklist

Listen

On Perpetual Novice, a reissue of the 2019 album.