Three years on from the release of debut album caroline, London-based eight-piece caroline announce new album caroline 2, to be released on May 30th via Rough Trade Records. The group spent 18 months working across various writing sessions in the UK, with recording primarily taking place at Big Jelly Studios in Ramsgate. The album was produced by the band’s own Jasper Llewellyn, Casper Hughes and Mike O’Malley, engineered by Syd Kemp, mixed by Jason Agel and mastered by Heba Kadry in NYC.
Launch single, ‘Tell me I never knew that’ features Caroline Polachek and its accompanying video self-shot by her and the band. The band explain how the song evolved, “We used to call this one ‘Backstreet boys’ because the opening top line felt like a Backstreet Boys song. The main riff was written by Casper on acoustic guitar and stuck out as a really catchy, bouncy, hypnotic thing. We wrote the opening top line together and straight away we thought ‘this sounds like a melody that Caroline Polachek might sing’ in its hooky-ness. We sort of joked that we’d ask her to sing it but didn’t think it’d actually be on the cards, until about a year later when we sent her the half-finished song and she was up for it!
Caroline was amazing. She wrote a load of extra parts that gave the whole thing such a lift, and then spent a few hours tracking a load of more improvised parts. We were still recording at about 1.30am when we decided to call it, but there was no indication that Caroline was the slightest bit tired or that she had lost any momentum in her ability to sing, even though she’d been singing for about 6 hours. It was an inspiring thing to witness! We did a little bit more re-ordering together with Caroline a few weeks after the session and then the song was finally there.”
This new album caroline 2 begins with a guitar attacking in chiming spikes. Then, another provides slower, lower strokes, lagging behind. Then a direct but clattering beat of drums. All three instruments play in a different rhythm to one another, but also intertwine to form a beautifully lopsided loop. Jasper Llewellyn and Magdalena McLean sing in unison above the fray while the swirling sound beneath them builds and builds in intensity – trombone, bass clarinet and harmonium infusing themselves one at a time in layers as the sound hurtles towards escape velocity. Then, just as a sharp upward swoop of violin threatens to push things stratospheric, comes a colossal counterblast of electronic noise that cuts it all in two. That overwhelming plummet takes over entirely for a few seconds, before the initial attack of guitars and drums rallies back upwards in turn, the two sounds pushing and pulling in mid-air, then finally dovetailing – two sonic worlds moving as one. The opener to caroline 2 is well-titled; Total euphoria delivers just that.
In one way, caroline’s second album picks up where its predecessor left off – 2022’s sublime self-titled debut concluded with
‘Natural death’, where they also explored the possibilities of interlocking off-kilter guitar patterns – but in many, many others, it finds them breaking new ground. Those two worlds on the opener are only the beginning. “One of the fundamental themes is
the idea of different things happening at once, things that are very different from each other but also simultaneous,” says
Llewellyn, who along with Mike O’Malley and Casper Hughes forms the songwriting core of the larger eight-piece band. It makes for a record of extraordinary scope – where the organic and the artificial, the harsh and the beautiful, the pristine and the hazy all clash and combine.
“The first record was a compilation, but this one is a declaration,” says Llewellyn. “It’s more intentional,” adds O’Malley. Fleshed out over several songwriting trips, with the central three upping sticks to rural Scotland, with vocalist and viola player McLean then joining them in southern France, followed by writing sessions as a full eight-piece in Margate and Essex then recording in Ramsgate, bonds have become strengthened. “We were just about an eight-person band on the last one, but now we’re a proper eight-person band,” says Llewellyn.
caroline’s founding members Casper Hughes, Jasper Llewellyn and Mike O’Malley began playing together in 2017. Llewellyn and Hughes met at university in Manchester, and on moving to London invited Llewellyn’s old friend Mike O’Malley to form a group, rehearsing in the upstairs room of a South London pub. As the band’s sound kept expanding, so too did their line-up, eventually becoming an eight-piece completed by trumpeter and bassist Freddy Wordsworth, violinists Magdalena McLean and Oliver Hamilton, percussionist Hugh Aynsley and flute, clarinet and saxophone player Alex McKenzie. By the time the cast settled towards the end of 2019, the songs too were expansive and emotive pieces, their rich palette drawing on a mixture of choral singing, Midwestern emo and O’Malley and Llewellyn’s roots in folk. Their debut self-titled album caroline (released in Feb 2022) and mixed by John ‘Spud’ Murphy (black midi, Lankum) featured in The Quietus and Loud & Quiet magazine’s Top 5 Albums Of The Year in 2022, and they were also cited as one of the Top 10 New Artists in Rolling Stone magazine.
Further praise for caroline at press:
“Bewitching debut from the London-based octet, blending string-driven Appalachian folk chants with spacious post-rock” –
Uncut 8/10
“caroline provide an ideal soundtrack for the reflection needed to push forward again” -Pitchfork
“It seems no task is too ambitious for caroline right now” – Loud & Quiet 8/10
“This is a fitting soundtrack to the times in which we’re living” – Shindig 8/10
“Deeply emotional deconstructed post-rock with heavy doses of orchestral beauty… incredible” – Stereogum
caroline
Album Tracklisting
1.Total euphoria
2.Song two
3.Tell me I never knew that
4.When I get home
5.U R UR ONLY ACHING
6.Coldplay cover
7.Two riders down
8.Beautiful ending
caroline are – Jasper Llewellyn – acoustic guitar, cello, drums, vocals. Mike O’Malley – electric guitar, vocals. Casper Hughes – electric guitar, vocals. Oliver Hamilton – violin. Magdalena McLean – viola, vocals. Freddy Wordsworth – trombone, trumpet, bass. Alex McKenzie – bass clarinet, flute, saxophone. Hugh Aynsley – drums, percussion.
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website: https://www.caroline.band
