Tim Jonze 

Ramona Lisa: Arcadia review – beguiling side-project from Chairlift singer

Chairlift's Caroline Polachek recorded this solo album on the road, and even in the air, and it's an organic, experimental pleasure, writes Tim Jonze
  
  

Ramona Lisa AKA Caroline Polachek
Oorganic and experimental … Ramona Lisa AKA Caroline Polachek Photograph: PR

This solo album from Chairlift singer Caroline Polachek was apparently recorded on a laptop in various hotel room cupboards, airport terminals and – if we're to believe Caroline Polachek herself – aeroplane toilets, presumably mid-flight when you're allowed to turn on your electronic devices. It certainly has a portable feel to it: there's running water on Hissing Pipes At Dawn, while the ringing bells of the title track make you feel as if you're overlooking a town square in some grand European city. Fans of Chairlift should find it both familiar and confounding: for every song that features Polachek's trademark lilting sighs and the purest of pop melodies (Backwards and Upwards), there's another that comprises random bursts of organ, mobile phone interference and the occasional tingle of bells (I Love Our World). The end product is a beguiling side project that feels organic and experimental. Quite what passengers hovering over the Atlantic waiting to have a wee made of it, however, is anyone's guess.

 

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