Poliça, image by Zoe Prinds Flash
Minneapolis quintet Poliça has shared a brand new single, announced a new album for early 2020 and a string of tour dates across the UK and beyond, Getintothis’ Chris Flack has the news.
Poliça is a band that comes from many places and many projects.
Made up of Channy Leaneagh, Chris Bierden, Ben Ivascu, Drew Christopherson, and Ryan Olson they schlepped around for years through numerous projects before finding each other in Minneapolis in 2011.
There were stints in fine arts schools, teaching abroad, duos, folk-pop outfits, and any number of personal and public trauma, it could be said they were looking for each other all along.
They recently shared a rousing single in the shape of the defiant Forget Me Now, their second track from their fourth long-player, When We Stay Alive which is due to hit the shelves on January 31st.
The album is released via Memphis Industries, the label that is home to Cymbals Eat Guitars, Dutch Uncles, Field Music and Jessica Hoop. Which is a fitting home given their unique ethic and sound.
The band are set to play a smattering of dates around the UK in February and kick things off with a special album release show at St John’s Church in Kingston on February 6th with Banquet Records.
Lead vocalist Channy Leaneagh has this to say about the new release “Forget Me Now is a song about letting off some steam. It’s about recognizing a pattern of choosing people who can’t love you how you wish to be loved. It’s still remaining very grateful, counting blessings day and night; but don’t confuse being at peace with being a pushover”
“I think I wrote these words while angry-shoveling this winter. How does it go? ‘Choose a liar once and that’s the liar’s fault; choose a liar three times and it seems maybe I likes liars?’ All the songs are about me and none of them are; this isn’t an excerpt from my diary but it has been many times”
The video for Forget Me Now was directed by friend and collaborator Isaac Gale and gives an insight into what Poliça’s upcoming shows might look, sound and feel like, it is nothing if not atmospheric.
The single follows their propulsive first release, Driving which was released as a double-single featuring the b side trash in bed which doesn’t appear on the album and is co-produced by Boys Noize.
Driving picked up lots of love on its release, catching the attention of Pitchfork, Stereogum, and Rolling Stone and this track is very likely to do the very same trick.
The band head out on what looks like an exhaustive tour for a heady chunk of 2020 which will see them travel through North America, the UK, and Europe next year, beginning in early February. We’re told that if your town isn’t on this list there is every chance it may be soon, so keep your eyes peeled for gaps.
The album comes from a time of considerable solitude for Leaneagh, written as it was after a fall from a roof while clearing ice in 2018 left her with smashed vertebrae that left her in a brace for months.
Given the circumstance, you could be forgiven for thinking When We Stay Alive would be full of remorse, brooding contempt of pain it is not about her accident but focuses on the power of healing and rewriting your story to aid that process, to reclaim the self as the world suggests something else entirely.
Leaneagh used the isolation and the inability to move around an awful lot to consider what life might be like when you lose your past and it can no longer act as a burden to the now.
“I felt there were many things I could look at and say, ‘This happened to me but I’m okay now. It’s not happening anymore and I got the care I needed for it. Now it’s time to rewrite the story I tell about myself and to myself”, she explains.
When We Stay Alive is Poliça at their most confident, it is layered with fierce, determined songs that are carried along by unrelenting heavy synths and punctuating beats of Olson.
In recent years Olson and Leaneagh have collaborated with musicians from across the globe, working with Bon Iver, Boys Noize, Leftfield, Daniel Wohl, Swamp Dogg and musicians from the 37d03d collective.
As a result of this time on the road working with so many others, When We Stay Alive features one of the largest musical casts Poliça have managed to corral into a room to make this record.
Our guess is their live shows will be quite the spectacle.
When We Stay Alive tracklist:
1. Driving
2. TATA
3. Fold Up
4. Feel Life
5. Little Threads
6. Be Again
7. Steady
8. Forget Me Now (video)
9. Blood Moon
10. Sea Without Blue
Poliça UK Tour dates
6th February – St John’s Church, Kingston, London.
7th February – Thekla, Bristol.
8th February – Gorilla, Manchester.
10th February – St. Lukes, Glasgow.
11th February – Village Underground, London.
12th February – Concorde 2, Brighton.
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