Album Review: When We Stay Alive by Poliça

At the very base level, if there’s anything to to be learned from Poliça‘s latest album, it’s that you probably shouldn’t try to clear snow and ice off your roof. It’s a lesson that Channy Leaneagh could quite happily teach, as back in 2018 she managed to tumble from her roof while doing just that, and damaged her back to such a degree that she ended up in a brace and endured limited mobility for a considerable period. However, Poliça’s forth album When We Stay Alive is more than just another album of wonky pop electro, for here is a lesson in healing.

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Where 2018's teaming up with Berlin orchestral collective s t a r g a ze, 'Music For the Long Emergency', was chaotic and fragile, follow-up and fifth studio album from Poliça, 'When We Stay Alive' is vividly human. Half written and recorded after singer Channy Leaneagh slipped from her roof whilst clearing ice, leaving her almost unable to move, it's clear to see that this is a record not about a tragic event, but more of accepting it and moving forward. 'Driving', both the first track and single from the album, kicks things into a newer, darker territory - claustrophobic synths, overwhelmingly-urgent bass and just-out-of-reach vocals feel like an unexpected knock on the door late at night.

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POLIÇA's fifth album 'When We Stay Alive' portrays a shifting, emotional transition, the highs and lows of the human condition accentuated to the nth degree. For this, the band and their stalwart Ryan Olson have teamed up with Kevin Koko, Dustin Zahn, Taskforce and Psymun to forge a unique soundscape that fuses POLIÇA's indietronica with late-90s Bristol downtempo and bass-heavy Berlin techno. If the discordant 'Music for the Long Emergency' had touches of Henryk Gorecki and Krzysztof Penderecki, 'When We Stay Alive' takes its cues from Marcel Dettmann and Massive Attack.

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An album of two halves, When We Stay Alive was written in part before frontwoman Channy Leaneagh fell from her roof clearing ice - smashing her L1 vertebrae and severely damaging her spine - and in part on her road to recovery afterwards, stuck in a back brace with limited mobility for months. Her physical trauma underpinned by mental trauma, Leaneagh turned to song writing as a path of redemptive healing, a way of reclaiming her own identity and retelling her story - one which, as with many who have lived through near death experiences, savours a second chance at life. Speaking to local magazine Mpls.

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With their previous albums, Poliça proved they're on a first-name basis with emotional trauma. Give You the Ghost chronicled a life-changing breakup, while the political angst of the late 2010s seeped into every cranny of Music for the Long Emergency. Just weeks after that album's release, Channy Leaneagh fell off her roof while clearing ice dams off of it, breaking her L1 vertebrae and damaging her spine.

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M inneapolis's Poliça set out their stall on their excellent 2012 debut, Give You the Ghost. With Ryan Olson's ahead-of-its-time blend of indie, alt-R&B and electronica the perfect foil for Channy Leaneagh's effects-smothered vocals, the overall feel was like a pitchshifted Cat Power fronting Portishead. But as the years have passed, rather than taking that experimental streak anywhere, they've continued to mine the same seam of elegant dinner-party music.

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