With the announcement that experimental synthpop band Poliça's third album United Crushers will be released on 4th March this year, it seems that the Minneapolis-based quintet are taking on an increasingly political slant by exploring their ties to their hometown (the album was written in Minneapolis in the winter of 2015). The album's title is a reference to a popular graffiti meme that can be found on many buildings and grain elevators in Minneapolis, referring to the countless dreams that have been crushed by the city's problems of urban decay, governmental corruption, racism and social and economic injustice.
The band's website promises stylistic and thematic innovations that will accompany 'their most ambitious album to date':
"The new album builds on POLIÇA’s signature synthesizer and percussion-heavy sounds with more complex arrangements and a bigger, crisper hi-fi punch due to the new approach they took to writing and recording: together, all in the same room. There's a tighter groove to these songs and a more vulnerable quality to them, especially in Leaneagh's singing. Her impressive vocal range is consistently on display throughout, beautifully raw and less electronically effected than on previous recordings.The themes found and explored on United Crushers are heavily political and deeply personal with thick references to social injustice, self-doubt and isolation, the rapidly increasing urban decline in gentrification, overcoming music industry machinations, and finding true and honest love in the wake of it all. Even at its darkest, the record is musically the band's most upbeat and celebratory. It is a weapon meant to empower the weak, the forgotten, and the disenfranchised."
It seems that the first single of the album, "Lime Habit", sets the scene for their new sound, with its thumping synths, metronome beat and energetic bass line. Leaneagh seems to be directly introspective and contemplative, spouting cryptic lines like 'I've got space in the light of lime/ A nod to me, a nod to time'. The lyrics seem more personal than political, hinting at a dark (but not depressive) moment of inner growth and transformation:
'Exhausting out in the arch of nightFaraway out, you're going to seeI'm a loss of faith, you're a changed beliefScored the goods for my babyIt's enough, so we hurry to leaveFlic flac, you're a habit to meFlic flac, you're a habit to beat'
The accompanying music video sees Leaneagh's head floating (in black and white) against a collage of vibrantly colored fruits, vegetables and tubers: being deeply introspective has never been so tropically artful. I'm expecting the other tracks on the album to take on a much darker subject matter though, and am eagerly waiting to see United Crushers taking Poliça to new territories of artistic/intellectual experimentalism.
P.S. Those who need an introduction to the band can check out this short Pitchfork documentary.
