POLIÇA - Madness

Since their groundbreaking debut Give You the Ghost earned them fans as unexpected as Bon Iver and Jay-Z, Minneapolis's POLICA have never made the same record twice. Madness, their sixth release on Memphis Industries, is their most focused and impeccably realized work yet, seven songs across 31 minutes that package up their first decade as a band with remarkable clarity and purpose.

Recorded mostly from 2020 to 2021 in Ryan Olson's Minneapolis studio, with Channy Leaneagh writing and recording her vocals from her own room, the album is a companion piece to 2020's When We Stay Alive and a deliberate closing of the book on the first era of POLICA. It is also their most sonically adventurous record, built around a new anthropomorphic production tool called AllOvers, designed by Olson and fellow producer and sound artist Seth Rosetter, and featuring additional co-production from Dustin Zahn, Alex Ridha, and Alex Nutter. The result is an album where bright, rhythmic instrumentation does much of the emotional heavy lifting, from the thudding, anthemic pulse of opener "Alive" to the slinky percussion of "Blood" and the leftfield electronic sprawl of closing track "Sweet Memz."

Leaneagh has summed up the album's lyrics and startling artwork with characteristic economy: "I am here for you all and I am never truly myself here. I am her for you all and I am never truly her." It is a record that keeps its cards close, rewards patient listening, and sounds like nothing else in the POLICA catalog.