London-based eight-piece caroline are sharing a new track and video ‘Coldplay cover’ today in advance of their new album caroline 2, out this Friday, 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.
The tender, sweeping video for ‘Coldplay cover’ was directed by caroline members Jasper Llewellyn, Mike O’Malley and Casper Hughes. Jasper says on ‘Coldplay cover’: This song is about the many seemingly incongruent, dissonant things that make up our experience; how we hold these multiple, contrasting things in our awareness and somehow make them into a reality that is coherent, that works together. In this case, there are two different songs, played at the same time, one in the kitchen, one in the living room of the same house in south east london. The microphone moves between the two rooms.
On the music video, Jasper says: Room in a room. World in a world. This video is our attempt to translate the spatial polyphony of ‘Coldplay cover’ into purely visual form. We made it in a day with the help of many friends and generous collaborators. Particular shout outs to Ellie Wintour for her design vision and incredible hard work making the video happen; Sam Donvito for being so open minded as DOP; Samara Langham for choreographing a full video’s worth of dance and movement on the spot, and to the wonderful performers for bringing the video to life. Lastly, we’d like to thank Lewisham Arthouse for being so welcoming and letting us use their beautiful room.
Launch single, ‘Tell me I never knew that’ features Caroline Polachek and its accompanying video was self-shot by her and the band.
Praise for earlier caroline 2 single ‘Tell me I never knew that”
“Striking… a pastoral ballad that feels digitally mediated and subtly strange.” -Pitchfork
“A real stunner… moving and peacefully cinematic” -FADER
“The delirious beauty of this song makes perfect intuitive sense” -Stereogum, Best Song of the Week
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.
caroline – Total euphoria (Official Video)
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.
caroline
caroline 2
Out this Friday, May 30th via Rough Trade Records
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
