Polica – Shulamith (2LP)

Album Info Hide Show Artist: Polia Album: Shulamith Released: USA, 2013 Tracklist: A1 Chain My Name A2 Smug A3 Vegas B1 Warrior Lord B2 Very Cruel B3 Torre C1 Trippin C2 Tiff C3 Spilling Lines D1 Matty D2 I Need $ D3 So Leave Info About Buying Vinyl From Our Record Store We are a small independent record store located at 211 High St, Preston in Melbourne, Australia (North of Northcote, between Thornbury & Reservoir) We buy and sell new and used vinyl records – if you have a collection you’d like to sell please click here . We ship Australia wide for a flat rate of $10 for standard shipping or $15 for express post. Free Shipping for orders $150 and over. You can also pick up your order in store, just select Local Pickup at the checkout. We also ship internationally – prices vary depending on weight and location. We ship vinyls in thick, rigid carboard mailers with a crushable zone on either side, and for extra safety we bubble wrap the records. 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You can contact our Melbourne record shop at (03) 9939 3807 or at [email protected] Happy Listening! Description Hide Show Polias second album, Shulamith, arrived in October 2013 with the kind of confidence bands usually spend years trying to fake. Minneapolis might not scream synthsoul hotbed, but this lot had already carved a sound that felt both nocturnal and unmistakably theirs. Channy Leaneaghs voice, shot through with autotune and harmoniser stacks, is the obvious hook, yet its the engine room that keeps you coming back. Two drummers, Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu, lock into patterns that tumble over each other without ever getting messy, while Chris Bierdens bass slides around their grooves like oil on water. Producer Ryan Olson, also of Gayngs, keeps the palette spare and icy, so the shimmer has space to linger. The title nods to Shulamith Firestone, the radical feminist whose book The Dialectic of Sex shook up ideas about gender and power in 1970. Leaneagh talked about Firestones writing as a spark rather than a doctrine, and you can hear that tension in the songs. Desire and control, softness and steel. Nothing here is didactic, but the atmosphere is politic in its own way, a chill room where intimacy and autonomy negotiate under neon light. Tiff is the headline moment, partly because Justin Vernon turns up to tangle his voice with Leaneaghs. He doesnt overshadow her, though. The duet plays like a mirror scene in a thriller, two perspectives smearing into one as synths glow and the drums pump like a panic attack. Chain My Name comes on springy and bright by comparison, a little dancefloor sugar that still has a bite in the lyric. If youre crate digging for Polia vinyl, those two cuts will sell you on the spot, but the deeper listens make Shulamith stick. I Need $ is the sleeper. Its sleek on the surface, yet theres a weight behind the hook that hints at latenight decision making. Very Cruel tightens the screws with clipped percussion and a vocal that floats just out of reach, like a conversation you cant quite finish. Warrior Lord stretches out, letting the drums breathe while synths flicker like faulty fluorescent tubes. Across the record, the production resists the obvious payoff. Choruses sneak in through side doors, and the thrill sits in texture as much as tune. Leaneaghs processed vocal is the bands most divisive move, but on Shulamith it feels essential to the writing. The effects arent there to hide anything. Instead they exaggerate the fractures: human breath, digital sheen, a stack of harmonies that sound like a single person arguing with herself. In a scene flooded with plugin gloss, Polia turn the treatment into an instrument, and its hard to imagine these songs any other way. A bit of context helps. The debut, Give You the Ghost, announced the project in 2012, but Shulamith tightened the bolts. The low end hits harder, the snare drums snap with more purpose, and the melodies carry a deeper ache. You can hear the live bands discipline in the way these grooves sit, which is rare for a record that leans so heavily on synthesisers. Its also hard to ignore the Minneapolis DNA running under it all, a town where R&B and artpop have rubbed shoulders for decades. If you ever caught Polia in a small room during this era, the album makes instant sense. The dual kits werent a gimmick. They were the show. Critics clocked the step up at the time, and fans did too. Its the record you point to when someone asks what Polia actually sounds like. If youre hunting Shulamith vinyl, youll want a clean pressing to catch the subtleties, especially the way the toms bloom and the subbass rolls under Tiff. Its a good gateway drug if you plan to buy Polia records online, since it sits neatly between the more spectral debut and the heavier swings they took later. For collectors, Polia albums on vinyl tend to reward repeat spins, and this one is no exception. The artwork is stark and a little unsettling, which suits the musics cool skinonteeth feel. In a Melbourne record store or anywhere people still browse with their hands, its the sleeve that stops you, then the sonics that seal the deal. If youre in the habit of supporting local shops that deal in vinyl records Australia wide, this album belongs in that stack of nightdrive favourites. Its sleek, bruised, and quietly defiant, and ten years on it still sounds like a private afterhours world you can step into whenever you need a bit of shadow with your shine. Product Reviews Hide Show Write a Review