Caroline Polachek

Every verse in “New Normal” was written about different scenes that happened while writing this record "Pang". Polachek said it was written over a bass loop played by Danny L Harle. "“Wrote ’New Normal’ with @dannylharle the same week as Insomnia, July 2017 in LA. Danny played me this midi sequence he’d made, a bass line by itself that changed key with every repeat. I heard the melody over it immediately, this sweet folky thing that modulated with the bassline. We were so psyched on the form of the song, seven verses with no chorus that tumbled and reset like a rubix cube or Escher drawing. We wanted the lyrics to be a string of standalone fragments, starting with the same line every time, but I couldn’t for my life decide what to say with that format; it was too open-ended. Walking back to the studio from a coffee break, a SUV skidded out of control and onto the sidewalk, almost hitting the two of us before crashing into a telephone pole. We were so shaky with adrenaline we could barely get back to work after, but it was clear the crash was a verse of the song. I secretly decided to limit the song to events that the two of us had experienced. A month later I sent Danny the finished lyrics – a surrealist history of our friendship, disjointed vignettes in chronological order: first meeting in at a sake bar in NYC ➰ a manic halloween in LA ➰ camped out in brooklyn to write during a blizzard ➰ performing at a London festival where I tripped over a fog machine and almost fell off the stage ➰ the disappearance of @poppotac ‘s injured robin ➰ the car crash ➰ the moments after. And each verse begins with the “What is this…?” from Parachute.”" -Caroline via Instagram