Channy Leanagh of Polica. The band plays the Biltmore Cabaret Aug 16.
Preview – Poliça at the Biltmore Cabaret, Vancouver, Aug 16 2012
Following appearances at a bunch of festivals, including Lollapalooza and Osheaga, Minneapolis band Poliça is kicking of a North American tour at the Biltmore Cabaret Thursday Aug 16. You should see them.
Blogging for Time Out Chicago, Brent DiCrescenzo writes, “Poliça gives Bon Iver a boner. Give the Minneapolis band 50 minutes of your time and the enchantment spell will work its effects on you, too… Two dueling drummers and a bassist weave grooves that swell and recede. Singer Channy Leaneagh, today outfitted in a floral jumper, sways in the hypnotic bustle, tapping a blue effects box with ten silver buttons on its back, doubling her vocals, wrapping them in blurring delay. If reggae had originated in Düsseldorf, Germany, and Annie Lennox played svengali, it might come out of the wash like this…”
Poliça is the brainchild of Minneapolis musicians Channy Leanagh and Ryan Olson. Both recorded and played live with Gayngs in 2010 before forming Poliça with Mike Noyce from Bon Iver.
“As touring [with Gayngs] progressed and Channy got more comfortable with the band and singing the songs, she would reinvent the parts she was doing in brilliant ways. It made me want to see where else she could go” explains Olson in a press release.
In June 2011, they began writing together what would become Poliça’s debut album, Give You The Ghost.
The result is 11 tracks at the intersection of pop and digitised R&B. “The recurring theme of this record is ‘what in the hell just happened and who in the hell am I anyways’,” Leanagh is quoted in the press release.
Both the single “Lay Your Cards Out” and the song “Wandering Star” (see video) feature Bon Iver’s Noyce on vocals. Ben Ivascu and Drew Christopherson contribute drums, Chris Bierden bass.
The name Poliça refers to the word “policy”, meaning a definite course of action adopted for the sake of expediency.
Music video – Polica, “Wandering Star”:
