caroline: “Tell me I never knew that” [ft. Caroline Polachek] Track Review

“Tell me I never knew that” is a digital anthem in Eden. English folk music has always been used to chart the slow trickle of societal change, tracing shifting norms, the rise and fall of new powers, and the modernisation of the landscape; this song, a collaboration with Caroline Polachek from the English band caroline’s forthcoming album, Caroline 2, feels like it might be one day used as evidence of a society undergoing a rapid flattening. Its opening lyrics capture an uneasy sense of dislocation: “I don’t even know if I’m alive/But I don’t wanna be somebody else,” sings Polachek, “Maybe I don’t wanna be anyone/And I don’t wanna be somebody else.”

Polachek’s presence on the song feels vital: Her voice, one of the most powerful and unique in modern music, can sound both unerringly human and machine-fabricated, and here she uses both modes, sounding both of a piece with caroline’s pastoral landscape and as if she’d been digitally superimposed atop it. It speaks to the song’s emotional core: the idea of being embodied but unmoored, present but trapped in feelings of nostalgia and anticipation. Eventually, her voice begins to intertwine with the song’s maelstrom of drums, acoustic guitar, woodwinds, and horns; as the music peters out, a digitally manipulated voice issues an end-of-history mantra that feels true, if not exactly comforting: “It always has been/It always will be/It always happens/This always happens.”