POSTPONED: Poliça, Wilsen

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Zoe Prinds-Flash

Poliça

These Minnesota natives have always imaginatively found ways to seamlessly combine genres, and the 2019 album When We Stay Alive is no exception. On the track “Steady” alone, there are shades of folk, synth-pop, R&B and dance music, all rendered to create a singular, cohesive and driving sound. With Wilsen.

press release: At the direction of state and local government, and in an abundance of caution we are working to reschedule/postpone all events through March 31 at The Sylvee, The Orpheum Theater, Majestic Theatre and High Noon Saloon. Sylvee box office hours will also be closed during this time. 

Further updates on rescheduled dates and cancellations are forthcoming. Patrons who purchased tickets during this time frame will be notified by email with additional information. Updates can also be found on the respective venue social media channels.

We appreciate your understanding and patience as we do our part to keep Madison healthy, and we look forward to seeing you in our venues again very soon.

Poliça shared their rousing, defiant new single “Forget Me Now,” the second from the band’s forthcoming album When We Stay Alive, out now via Memphis Industries. “‘Forget Me Now’ is letting off some steam. It's about recognizing a pattern of choosing people who can’t love you how you wish to be loved. It’s still remaining very grateful, counting blessings day and night; but don’t confuse being at peace with being a pushover,” says singer Channy Leaneagh. “I think I wrote these words while angry-shoveling this winter. How does it go? ‘Choose a liar once and that’s the liar’s fault; choose a liar three times and it seems maybe I likes liars?’ All the songs are about me and none of them are; this isn’t an excerpt from my diary but it has been many times." 

The “Forget Me Now” video was directed by friend and long-term collaborator Isaac Gale and previews Poliça’s upcoming 2020 performances. The track follows brooding and propulsive first single “Driving;” released as a double-single featuring non-album track B-side “trash in bed,” co-produced by Boys Noize, the track caught the attention of Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Stereogum, The FADER, Brooklyn Vegan, and Paste, among others. Produced by Poliça co-founder and producer Ryan Olson and mixed by Jim Eno (Spoon), When We Stay Alive is now available for pre-order. 

Poliça—who headlined two sold out hometown Minneapolis shows last week—will head out an extensive tour throughout North America, the UK, and Europe next year, beginning in early February. A current itinerary is below and tickets are on sale now. 

When Leaneagh fell off her roof while clearing ice in early 2018, she smashed her L1 vertebrae and battered her spine, leaving her in a brace with limited mobility for months. Yet When We Stay Alive, is not about one debilitating accident. It’s about the redemptive power of rewriting your story in order to heal, and reclaiming your identity as a result. 

In the still silence of healing, she found that a multitude of feelings were becoming very loud. Leaneagh realized her self-identity had become attached to her experiences of physical and mental trauma, and she began to consider what it would be like to live without the past as a burden. “I felt there were many things I could look at and say, ‘This happened to me but I’m okay now. It’s not happening anymore and I got the care I needed for it. Now it’s time to rewrite the story I tell about myself and to myself,’" she explains.

When We Stay Alive possesses a new confidence in its sound, reflected in its fierce, determined songs and anchored by the heavy synths and punctuating beats of Olson. Over the last several years Olson and Leaneagh have widely collaborated with musicians from all over the world: both with Bon Iver, and Leaneagh individually with Boys Noize, Lane 8, Sasha, Leftfield, and Daniel Wohl; Olson with Swamp Dogg in addition to countless musicians from the 37d03d collective. As a result, When We Stay Alive features one of the largest musical casts of any Poliça record to date. 

On Poliça’s first three albums, Leaneagh focused on restructuring the world and her relationships within it. On When We Stay Alive, she realizes the power in restructuring her inner self. The album’s title references the idea of moving forward through life—our experiences, both good and bad—and what happens next with the strength we find.

Wilsen, the Brooklyn-based trio of Tamsin Wilson (guitar/vocals), Johnny Simon Jr. (guitar) and Drew Arndt (bass), will release their new album Ruiner on February 21 via Secret City Records / Dalliance Recordings. They shared the album's title track along with an accompanying video directed by Stephen Michael Simon.

"'Ruiner' is about meeting your various inner selves and a promise to be better," explains Tamsin Wilson. "It was written after a moment of self-sabotage and I wanted to address the inner monster who was responsible."

The album was produced by Andrew Sarlo, who has been praised for his production work on Big Thief's entire catalog and Bon Iver's i,i, and mastered by Sarah Register who has worked with artists as diverse as Ariana Grande, Protomartyr and U.S. Girls. 

Ruiner dissolves both the heavy reverb and ethereal moments found on their first recording by instead letting the band’s essentials – drums, bass, guitar, and vocals – have center stage. In the album’s opening moments, you might hear a knotted wash of guitars and Wilson softly humming, for a very brief moment returning you to their dreamscape but sharply, a driving rock rhythm comes into focus and so too does a revitalized band. While Wilsen have retained elements of their fragility, on Ruiner they use bolder sounds and play with gritty textures and jarring grooves.

"Making this record was somewhat of a coming of age process," Wilson explains. "We're getting older and becoming more deliberate, less precious, less measured. Overthinking less and trusting instincts more."

For Tamsin Wilson, she’s also moving towards self-acceptance. “I have an inherent shyness," she says. "I'm acknowledging and finding a way with it as I get older." Throughout the record, she comes to terms with her many sides, including her introversion and her inner, self-sabotaging monster to which the album title refers. On "Feeling Fancy," with her distinctively hushed vocals overpowering the track’s clamorous instrumentals, Wilson offers listeners a powerful, and celebratory, declaration that "Quiet’s not a fault to weed out."

Ruiner is the follow-up to Wilsen's critically-acclaimed debut album I Go Missing In My Sleep, which UPROXX called "2017's finest folk debut." Stereogum proclaimed, "Wilson is capable of drawing blood with swift lyrical jabs that strike chords you didn’t see coming," while NPR Music said, "[Wilson is] a major revelation: a singer whose moody, calmly dreamy voice would sound amazing in just about any genre or context."