Kelley Polar

Kelley Polar's 2005 debut Love Songs of The Hanging Gardens proved that crafted, deeply personal music was still possible in the plastic, disposable world that is 21st century pop. Polar's new album, I Need You to Hold On While the Sky Is Falling, crystallizes that possibility into a unique, strange and beautiful collection of songs that somehow, by accident or design, remains utterly accessible. In other words: outsider pop.

Whereas Polar's first album had moments as cold and mysterious as deepest space, I Need You to Hold On is meant to be more intimate, more inviting that its predecessor. Polar has described it as personal vision of the human voice with electronics. Perhaps anachronistically in this Age of Shuffle, I Need You to Hold On is meant to be listened to as an album, a journey from world to world that is saturated with secret messages, both musically and lyrically (even down to the artwork).

Despite the intimacy and intricacy, there still is room for fun: fantastic rhythms and infectious basslines are not excluded from Polar's tapestry, and since it is once again mixed by Morgan Geist (Metro Area), I Need You to Hold On� sounds just as good as it feels.

Get ready for Kelley Polar's outsider pop: out of this world, yet of it.