“Door”

Over the past decade, Caroline Polachek has led several artistic lives over. As half of beloved indie pop group Chairlift, she wielded her bright falsetto like a secret weapon, detonating their groove-based songs with blasts of vitality, sadness, or both. The laptop-bred alter ego Ramona Lisa allowed Polachek to turn inward, crafting melodic, pastoral pop songs that paved the way for CEP, an ambient side project of “useful” music for passive activities. Now, with the arrival of “Door,” a song simply credited to Caroline Polachek, a new sense of significance lingers—in what direction does a musical polyglot go when presenting a project attributed only to herself?

Airy and sprawling, “Door” is as elliptical and strange as Chairlift’s most unconventional moments, but shot through with a romantic open-heartedness that’s all Polachek. Her diaphanous voice flits through various processors, sounding like she’s singing from another room entirely at one point before returning to a liquid, cool delivery. The kaleidoscopic, essential video renders the song in surreal visions of endless mirrors, doorways, and warped fields, with Polachek and a pair of greyhounds as guiding spirits. Taking an understated, strange approach to the pro forma pop song, “Door” coasts on gentle programmed drums, finger-picked acoustic guitar, and synths as sharp as gasps. But it’s Polachek’s wistful, memorable hook, journeying through a series of doorways to someone forever on the other side, that pushes “Door” to its peak. Collapsing into an agile vocal solo, “Door” ends on an ethereal and emotive note, providing an off-kilter introduction to a new era of Polachek’s spare pop music.