kelley polar’s jukebox jury

I love Kelley Polar and I want you to do so as well. He’s a tough sell, I know. “Classically trained viola player that makes over-orchestrated electronic pop music punctuated by his own untrained voice.” Sounds like a recipe for disaster, right? Not at all. What resulted when Polar stepped behind the boards for his second album, I Need You to Hold on While the Sky Is Falling, was an entire world spring up fully-formed from his mind. A world that I don’t think anyone else, aside from similar visionaries like Bruce Haack, is making nowadays. Forget lazy comparisons to people like Hercules and the Love Affair (great), Diskjokke (not as great) or Hot Chip (often great, often not great), Polar is doing something that I feel is wholly original and hugely fascinating. Oh. And it sounds great.

Right, fawning over. (Or IS it?) I went up to Polar’s cabin in the New Hampshire woods recently to talk to him about his varied influences, what it’s like playing with New York disco doyens Metro Area and his electronic music-making sister. Here are the results.