Caroline Polachek Shares New Acoustic Ballad, “Look At Me Now”

Caroline Polachek’s solo debut, Pang, is out this Friday, Oct. 18, and she’s rolled out four sparkling electronic tracks over the past few months: “Door,” “Ocean of Tears,” “Parachute” and “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings.” Today (Oct. 14), she’s given us one last preview of the riches in store with “Look At Me Now.”

Her fifth and final single is a surprisingly stripped-down break-up ballad. “Said I’d never leave you, but here we are,” she croons over a shimmering guitar riff, “And you can’t look at me now / I haven’t changed, I’m still the same / But you can’t look at me now.” The track’s melodies are as soaring as we’ve come to expect from Polachek, but the largely analog simplicity of its instrumentation is new territory. In a statement, she shares that she’s “never really worked with acoustic guitar before,” and that she found inspiration from the folk-oriented artists she listened to growing up:

“Look At Me Now” is the “diary entry” of the album. I wrote it last year while processing a mix of guilt, self-destructiveness and hope. I’ve never really worked with acoustic guitar before, and in “Look At Me Now” it’s an umbilical connection to the Lilith-Fair-era artists I grew up listening to, like Jewel and Sarah [McLachlan], [whose] wistfully adult lyrics I pretended to understand at the time and now do.

Listen to “Look at Me Now” below, and watch Polachek perform with Chairlift in the Paste office circa 2010 further down.