Caroline Polachek Quotes Page 2

“I went to art school, and I studied drawing and video art, and I've always approached music so visually as a result that I found it really difficult in the past to kind of hand off music to another director, 'cause it just ends up being this kind of mid-zone where it's nobody's vision, really.”

“I woke up in London one morning in the middle of an adrenaline surge, and I was just lying there – the sun was coming up – trying to think of the best way to describe this feeling, and 'pang' was the only word I could really use to describe it.”

“I would enjoy seeing anyone else sing 'Caroline Shut Up.' That would be interesting. I would give that one away, actually, which is funny, even though it's very personal.”

“I'm a horribly chronic 'get half way through the book and start a new one' person.”

“I've definitely been in that situation many times – staying in a relationship longer than I should. I think there's so much of your identity that comes from a relationship.”

“I've probably listened to 'Try Me' by DeJ Loaf 500 times. It's a little slower than your typical strut BPM, but it still works.”

“If I'm receiving an email from a stranger, I usually like it to be properly thoughtful and explanatory, and not just hitting someone up for a casual favor out of the blue who you've never met before. I really believe in manners.”

“If you want to know what the DJ is playing, just ask. You don't have the right to stick your head in front of my screen as if you're an expert leaning over the shoulder of the apprentice.”

“If you're walking through the Union Square subway station – New Yorkers know it's obnoxious and crowded, and in the summer it's too hot – there are always amazing musicians playing, and sometimes there are multiple, different musicians set up in there.”

“In New York, if you spend a few hours doing nothing, you feel like the whole world passed you by.”

“Low' was probably the album that influenced me more than any other, because of how it combined humor and impressive, glamorous, driving energy with this totally surreal soundscape production.”

“Many of the elements associated with storybook mythology and gothic aesthetics are actually not expressive.”

“Music feels so environmental to me, especially the process of working with synths or mixing. I started thinking about music as a psychological landscape as well. It's a landscape of the mind.”

“My first concert was Third Eye Blind.”

“My mom wasn't thrilled about me being in a band, because she very correctly said she couldn't see any sort of stability in it.”

“My parents got divorced when I was really young and I was a very hyperactive kid, so both parents independently would play Enya at the house to calm me down and soothe me as a kid.”

“My stepfather is a baron. He has a castle in Belgium that's been in his family for hundreds and hundreds of years. It's not fancy; it's really sort of brimstone and dark. It's got a moat and a drawbridge.”

“One of my biggest Disney influences in terms of world-building on this record was a background painter named Eyvind Earle, who was working in the '50s. He would make hyper-modern shapes that were sharp retellings of pastoral themes.”

“One of the goals we had when making 'Moth' was to have the vocals sound less treated and less processed than we'd ever had before, to just let them be exposed and very audible.”

“Panging is the kind of sharp pain you feel inside when you're reminded of some kind of unattended need or something that you've neglected.”

“Synthesizer music has been accepted as emotional for long enough that it isn't a huge reach, conceptually, to think of a fake voice as 'emotional', especially since there's a human composing it.”

“The men's dance style in dancehall is territorial, but it's also flirtatious and it's also showing off strength by way of smooth movement that you can only do if you're really strong. It has so much attitude.”

“We are always in a state of flux, and taking risks is important.”

“Well working by yourself, especially when no one knows about it, is totally liberating because it's very impulse-driven. You work when you want to work. You work when you can work. No deadlines. No conversation. No compromise. No help.”

“Well, I'm just a really sentimental person, and I just get leveled by things so easily, like from films, to personal interactions, to memories, to music.”

“When I came up in a band – not just in a band, but a kind of underground DIY community – there was such a clear cut distinction between what pop was and what not pop was in very simplistic terms.”

“When I was in middle school, I loved Egyptian mythology.”

“Yes, when I come up with ideas on my own, it's almost always a melody, just as often an instrument or bassline as it is a vocal. But it is a single, linear, monophonic thing. Something you could hum or whistle.”

“You'll see every kind of New Yorker in there. You really feel like you're in the belly of the beast when you're in Union Square.”

“Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they're doing – this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.”