CEP - Drawing the Target Around the Arrow

Pitchfork 70

Caroline Polachek—of the recently-disbanded synth-pop outfit Chairlift—has characterized her forays into sine-wave synth composition as a recuperative process, “an ear break from working on whatever I was working on.” Drawing the Target Around the Arrow, released under her initials, CEP, collects eighteen of these sparse instrumental tracks, recorded between 2012 and 2016. Polachek’s songwriting for Chairlift and solo projects like Ramona Lisa often skews dreamy and ornate, sometimes edging into cloying, but these compositions embrace a neutral, elemental sound. Drawing the Target is less a departure than a detour, but it’s a lovely one all the same, offering a sort of instinctual minimalism without conceptual baggage.

Sine waves are sound in its most elemental (and, in a sense, least stylized) form; aesthetically, Drawing the Target is made of thin, its reedy tones bending into one another but rarely intersecting. Full of negative space, it’s the kind of music that gets lost if it’s competing with conversation, or street sounds, or the rush of a subway car. In this sense, these tracks are personal by design, cultivating something of a contemplative space. Some melodies on the album emerge more resolute than others— “Singalong” repeats, in vibraphone-like staccato, a sweet, optimistic phrase, and “Sleeping Fish” sounds like it could be a sketch for a B-side from Huerco S.’s recent album—but it’s just as likely to softly growl and hum. “Borg Pillow” is almost pure texture, quietly groaning in and out, and “Pupil” sustains the same unchanging notes for its full five-and-a-half-minute duration.

The overall tone is generally unobtrusive, and the individual tracks often run together. To this effect, it almost seems odd that the songs have been given titles that conjure physical objects, nature, and human emotion: perhaps the most satisfying aspect of this release is its definitively non-linguistic form of expression. And yet, even if the sine wave is a distinctly unvarnished tool for music-making, Polachek’s compositions are also stylish in their way. Minimalism is often embraced as a utilitarian salve to cultural overload—in this case, applied as a practical break from pop music's loaded emotional structures. But the smart elegance that drives Drawing the Target, I imagine, will also map well onto the fleshier pop songs Polachek has to come.