More than once I have had to sit through an acquaintance’s complaint that electronic musicians are irresponsible artists who con people by adding nothing but pigment to rough sketches instead of impressing with old-fashioned 'real' musicianship. I can just imagine what my combative naysayer would make of Kelley Polar. Actually, I would enjoy him attempting to test his theory on I Need You To Hold On While the Sky Is Falling: an accessible, electronic effort that unquestionably displays a powerful musical adeptness at play.
Due to his collaborative chumminess with Morgan Geist (who provides the mix here) and his enthusiastic string work on some key Metro Area releases, one would not be amiss in judging Polar as some mad scientist stuffed full of pixie sticks, locked in a never-ending quest to reinvent symphonic disco. He is probably that and certainly a lot more. Although I Need You to Hold On While the Sky Is Falling has a lot going for it besides the D-word, Polar gives that genre a right wake-up kick in the nards when he turns his attention to the bass and boogie. Born in Croatia (so the story goes), briefly schooled at (and expelled from) Juilliard, brother of Blevin Blectum and cousin of Gavin Russom (of Delia and Gavin), Polar (real name Mike Kelley) has built strongly from his already-strong debut Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens, but his technique is different this time around. I Need You to Hold On While the Sky Is Falling once again spotlights Polar's penchant for string augmentation, but he snatches things from a wider palette of styles, giving listeners no opportunity to settle into any comfort zone.
Despite this tag-plucking, there is still a strict vision of 'album' on I Need You to Hold On While the Sky Is Falling, more so than on Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens. This is especially surprising given his past inclusion on elaborate singles production. The heavily vocodered sits beside the minimal sweep of heart-wrenching strings, the percolating tempo of "Zeno of Elea" nestles nicely alongside the groovy pomp pop of "Sea of Sine Waves," and it all feels cohesive. But, like all good 'albums,' there is stellar 'single' material, too. "Entropy Reigns (In the Celestial City)" is one of the most enjoyable dancepop songs released the year. Assisted by Clare de Lune on female vox, Polar has constructed a smile-inducing electro throwback that is convincing enough to prompt revisionists to check the record for pics featuring Egyptian-style eyeliner and haircuts on the bias. With playful, lobbing back-and-forth, it has the dated feel of The Human League, or, if this decade is more familiar, to Stars at the beginning of their career. Regardless, it is one of this year's unsung dancefloor savers with plenty of cliché tricks: organ clowning and electro-claps, ubiquitous string snippets, and the occasional pause on vocals that ruminate assumingly about Polar’s past non-stop partying lifestyle.
The opener also packs a punch to the plexus. Starting with a spacey, new-age-y preamble before propelling itself into a Thriller-esque, parquet-friendly superhero, "A Feeling of the All-Thing" turns out to be a more heartfelt tribute than any will.i.am-addled redux ever could. After that, the album plots a strange and sometimes colorless course, albeit a mostly enjoyable one. "Chrysanthemum" is a bare-bones track tinged with tropicalia and featuring great vocal styling reminiscent of 1960s singing siblings The Free Design. Things turn dark lyrically on "Rosenband," despite its peppy mock futuristic beat, and "A Dream in Three Parts (On Theses by Enesco)" sounds like something Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes would try if he were a solo act.
Polar’s singing, which is soft as a summer shit, serves the songs well. With songs apparently influenced by Schubert and trilobites and Enesco and the Burgess Shale, well-endowed vocals would not matter much here. Like the music, lyrics, production, et cetera, they work because of their combination of clarity and laissez-faire. I would venture to guess that Polar places every note meticulously, but everything here sounds serious and off-the-cuff fun at the same time. There is also a headstrong reliance on cosmic claptrap on I Need You to Hold On While the Sky Is Falling, but it sidesteps sounding hackneyed. Polar’s masterful string arrangements and flourishes mean that the album never sounds cold; you can always put a face to his music -- his face, actually. It is reassuring to know that no matter where Polar decides to veer his musical ship, strings will always be his identifier and his unique calling card. No one does it like Polar, even if it is all clever manipulation in order to trick people with 'artificial' sounds.
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