There is a clear cultural thread weaving desire into contemporary art and experience. Nobel laureate Annie Ernaux has become a touchstone in discussions of longing and memory, while novels like Sara Torres’s autofiction exploring mourning and desire have dominated summer conversations. On social platforms, early explorations of longing have sparked dialogue, and even recent cinema has grappled with pure desire in stark, cinematic terms. These moments collectively shape how audiences hear, see, and feel desire in the present moment.
Caroline Polachek channels this mood with her album Desire, I want to return you, artfully grounding it in her personal history while expanding the landscape of pop. The opening track invites listeners into a kind of earthly paradise—palm trees, turquoise seas, and crimson sunsets—while setting a tonal course that will thread together organic warmth and digital precision. From there, the record moves through a dialogue between the tangible and the imaginary, between analog charm and modern production, and between intimate heartbreak and monumental visions. The imagery is lush and provocative, with songs that evoke immortality and moments of pure, almost sacramental longing. And yet the core question remains: if desire is not simply the object of affection but a state of being, what happens when longing becomes the very person or force we aspire to embody?
embrace the unknown
In this work, Polachek seeks not a single longing but a complete absorption into desire itself. The album riffs on a wide spectrum of pop history to push beyond familiar boundaries, drawing on the atmospheres of 90s trip-hop, the melodic weight of grand pop, and the avant-garde tendencies that have marked Polachek’s career. The result is not a pastiche but a fresh synthesis—an original voice that acknowledges icons like Enya, Björk, and Imogen Heap while refusing to imitate them. Collaborator Danny L. Harle contributes a meticulous production touch that keeps the music adventurous and tactile, ensuring the record speaks with a coherent and fearless identity. The listener is carried toward soundscapes that feel both intimate and expansive, inviting a reckless curiosity about where genuine desire might lead next.
angel choir
The album begins on a grounded note, takes us toward an increasingly spiritual horizon, and then closes on an almost celestial chorus. One standout track captures desire as something volatile, as elusive as the smoke rising from a volcano, a reminder that what is sought is forever just beyond reach. The closing moments settle into a vast, hymn-like reverie where harmonies multiply into a chorus that seems to dissolve into the air. In this framework, desire remains the defining tension of the work: the appeal, the ache, the endless pursuit. The ending suggests that longing is not a failure to obtain but a perpetual invitation to imagine more, to keep moving toward what might finally become real when the moment allows it to happen.