NYLON - April 2009 - (Page 149) radar: a new record deal and a popular ipod ad finally give chairlift the hearty boost they deserve. by andy beta. photographed by brooke nipar THE GREENPOINT BUILDING that houses Chairlift’s rehearsal room is a maze of art spaces, the air spiced with sawdust and pot smoke. After meandering about in search of the trio—singer Caroline Polachek, guitarist-keyboardist Aaron Pfenning, and drummer Patrick Wimberly—I try a door that opens into a room painted blood red. Sam Cooke’s soul classic “Night Beat” wafts out, but with an uncanny countermelody provided by Polachek. Then she lets loose a skin-prickling howl. The scream is the result of Polachek’s recent sessions with an opera-voice coach, and it’s the polar opposite of her sweet coo—as heard on her band’s breakout single, “Bruises.” That confection popped up in an iPod Nano commercial last year, lodging the song into countless earbuds. Riding a winsome bass and sparkling keyboard line right out of the Cure’s “Close to You,” Polachek’s and Pfenning’s vocals engage in a playful tug of war: Polachek sings of doing handstands and bruising her knees to attract her crush, while Pfenning assuages said injuries with frozen strawberries. “I don’t have a regular human voice,” Polachek deadpans as she and her bandmates kick back in a corner of their practice space. “I have a voice that is capable of a lot of really weird shit.” Even her vocal teacher described her singular pipes as “an ‘otter voice’ and an ‘igloo voice,’” Polachek recalls. high times Apparently a synesthetic, the instructor also told her that she has “a tendency to splash the igloo with aquamarine paint.” Such chilliness befits a band that takes its name from a ski-resort apparatus that was omnipresent during their time at the University of Colorado. A couple of misfits in a sea of Abercrombie, Polachek and Pfenning met in the mid-’00s during an economics class where they immediately gravitated toward each other. A day later, the two swapped demos, with Polachek’s tape featuring the twangy songs she sang in Wimberly’s band, the Rhodies. Chairlift’s original intent was, in Polachek’s words, “to evoke a haunted house without any of the familiar mechanisms of horror-movie soundtracks.” Polachek and Pfenning made a beeline to Brooklyn in August of 2006 to work on Chairlift with original bassist Kyle McCabe (who soon after left the band); unbeknownst to them, Wimberly had moved out east as well, where he was following up his collegiate study of jazz vibraphone by playing shows around town. “I literally ran into them in Union Square within days of moving here,” Wimberly remembers. He swiftly joined the group, and together they honed their current electro-pop sound. (Such random encounters also led the group to befriend Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden of MGMT, who were looking for a practice space to share. “They were the best roommates ever,” Pfenning laughs. “They paid rent and were never there.”) Chairlift’s debut, Does You Inspire You, quietly emerged on indie label Kanine last fall, chock-full of songs about plastic trash, pencils, and health class— all underpinned by gurgling electronics and reverbed-out guitars, horns, and even Wimberly’s vibraphone. No doubt helped out by the Apple exposure, the trio signed to Columbia in December 2008, hoping that the label, which bolstered MGMT, would give Inspire a second chance with a wider release. A month later, the band entered the studio to finesse their debut—remixing and reworking songs, plus adding two brand-new tracks, “Flying Saucer Hat” and “Dixie Gypsy,” the latter featuring Grizzly Bear’s Chris Taylor. “It’s like when George Lucas made the first Star Wars,” Pfenning explains. “Then he went back and remastered everything.” Chairlift’s appeal may not yet stretch to the outer reaches of the universe, but they’re working on it: warming people over, one igloo at a time. CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: patrick wimberly, caroline polachek, and aaron pfenning
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