KELLEY POLAR - I NEED YOU TO HOLD ON WHILE THE SKY IS FALLING (2008)

"At the top of the mountain, there is a special sensation at the centre of your body, and you can feel the earth moving underneath your feet. In the deepest part of the ocean, there is a cool and special place that is good for thinking. It happens to all of us at the same time. A feeling of the All-Thing."
ARTIST````KELLEY POLAR
ALBUM````I NEED YOU TO HOLD ON WHILE THE SKY IS FALLING
GENRE````LEFT-FIELD, HOUSE, ELECTRO
YEAR``````2008

REVIEW FROM PITCHFORK:
The highlights come easy and often. The aforementioned album opener "A Feeling of the All-Thing" turns that churning spoken-word passage into the skeleton for a celebratory sliver of symphonic electro; "Roseband" opens on a set of string trills before blossoming into a brisk, stuttery bit of disco; the throbbing "A Dream in Three Parts" rests on a gooey analog synth and Polar's even gooier delivery; and the sumptuous, string-drenched boy-girl duet of "Entropy Reigns (In the Celestial City)" is one of the best of the year so far.

Never mind that all that hokum isn't actually so hokey, that the ideas that form the backbone of the album's intro sequence-- that mind/body divide-- have functioned as dance music critic catnip for the better part of the last 15 years; by working them into a strain of music that walks the tightrope between that divide, Polar's managed a neat rhetorical track. More than anything else, it's really Polar's willingness to extend himself beyond dance music's often frustrating, low-risk, low-reward tendency towards po-faced seriousness that excites. Regardless of how you square with his overly-besotted singing style, his new age proselytizing, his occasionally agonizing earnestness-- and make no mistake, some people will hate this record-- it's hard to debate the artistic impulses that led him to make it. After all, if the sky really were falling, what more could one person do than set out to make a new one?

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