Chairlift Really Hate Thompson Twins, Explain Why They Sound Like the '80s

Despite their synthy, somewhat retro sound, Brooklyn pop duo Chairlift insist that they weren't intentionally influenced by the music of the '80s. In fact, they weren't even listening to a lot of music from that decade when they made their debut album, 2008's Does You Inspire You. It wasn't until the record started eliciting comparisons to acts from the era that singer and synth master Caroline Polachek started to check them out, and become a fan.

"I actually discovered some of my favourite stuff because of people, journalists or friends, telling me that our stuff sounded like it," Polachek tells Spinner. "I'd never heard of Yellow Magic Orchestra or Art of Noise until we got compared to it. A lot of bad stuff, too. People said we sounded like the Thompson Twins and I hate the Thompson Twins."

"It's the haircut," Patrick Wembley, Polachek's vaguely Thompson-esque haired partner in musical crime, offers with a smirk.

"Yeah. I've tried listening to it," the singer continues. "Like 'maybe this is something I'll like!' but I was like 'Oh. I'm insulted now.'"

The original comparisons, Polachek suspects, came more from the general atmosphere that the band were trying to evoke rather than any particular sound.

"I think the way that we related to '80s music on the first record that people might have been picking up on wasn't an actual reference to the '80s, but more of a reference to places like department stores and gas stations, where you hear these epic ballads that seem like a graveyard," she says. "It's like a graveyard where there's these epic, sparkly ballads. It just seems like the most tragic and uninhabited thing in the world, and that's what we wanted to reference. We wanted to reference the feeling of being in that department store. So it had nothing to do with being a throwback. We wanted to reference those places."

Even though they're listening to a lot more music from the'80s now than when they made Does You Inspire You, the decade remained more of a conceptual influence than a musical one when they began the arduous 18-month process of making their sophomore album, Something, which was released this past winter.

"I actually don't like talking about this, because I don't like how Chairlift are compared to the '80s," admits Wembley. "But what I do think is really cool about pop music in the '80s is, to me, it seems like there was a quality of song and songmanship and appreciation for lots of different styles of production and lots of different tempos. Now, all pop music is the same tempo and it all has the same beat. Pop music has a narrower definition now than it did in the '80s."


Something rejects any narrow definitions of pop music, tackling different sounds, tempos, and a whole spectrum of emotion, from the sunny swoon of "I Belong in Your Arms" to the the haunting, JG Ballard-esque menace of "Sidewalk Safari."

"I think there were a bunch of different moods that we wanted to be able to embody," explains Wembley. "But, at the same time, it feels like a more cohesive piece."

"It's kind of an autobiographical record, too," adds Polachek. "Not super literally, but in terms of the moods. We went through a lot of different stages of frustration and anxiety and joy and silliness during this time in our lives. A lot of tension. And yes, we're older now than when we made the first record and dealing with different kids of things and different kinds of relationships and all of the normal bullshit that comes with growing up. And I think that kind of tension was very important for us to carry throughout the record.

"For example, songs like 'Take It Out On Me' feel more adult. There's something really sexy and groovy about the way it sounds superficially, but then you listen to the lyrics and there's this kind of dark tension there, but yet there's still a kind of catharsis in it. It's not dark for the sake of being dark. It's just describing the push and pull."

Something hasn't completely managed to stem the tide of '80s references being thrown Chairlift's way, but Polachek, at least, doesn't seem particularly bothered by them. Besides the varying moods, she admits that there are certain touches that have been generally influenced by her post-Does You musical discoveries, and she suspects that it's those sounds that people are picking up on more than any direct influence by specific bands.

"For me, the relationship with '80s music is super textural. I can't help but love a lot of the textures of the sounds in bands like Yellow Magic Orchestra, everything by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, stuff like that. So some of the pallets that we used on this record for synths were inspired by those sounds.

"Maybe there's a kind of masculine/ feminine interplay with our music, too. And any of the textural '80s references fall within the more feminine side of our music and then Patrick's writing is more of the bass-heavy hip-hop aspect, which feels like the more masculine element of the music to me. So it's kind of like sparkles versus grime."

"New band name!" jokes Wembley. "Sparkles and Grime."

"Oh man," groans Polachek. "That sounds like a novel. Like a weepy novel for women."


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