Inside caroline’s stunning, unique new album

On first look, caroline 2 seems like a throwaway title for the new album from the London octet. A self-titled follow-up to their also self-titled debut album from 2022, the name is even described as “insignificant” by the band’s bassist and trumpet player Freddy Wordsworth. 40 minutes and eight astonishing songs later though, the title starts to make a good deal of sense.

Binding this exceptional album together is the idea of two disparate ideas finding a home together in a deeply unusual but satisfying harmony. Opening track ‘Total euphoria’ begins with one guitar being aggressively strummed, before another begins playing the same chord just slightly out of time. They then come together gloriously – something close to the song’s title – while drums start and abruptly stop in the background.

‘UR UR ONLY ACHING’, meanwhile, soars into life as a chiming post-rock epic, before turning onto a sixpence for an acoustic mid-section recorded completely separately as a demo in south London’s tranquil Nunhead Cemetery. A disorientating record scratch later and you’re back in the bliss of the soaring post-rock guitars and yearning, manipulated vocals.

The approach is used most thrillingly on ‘Coldplay cover’ though. To create the song, the eight-piece band split up into two groups of four, positioned in different rooms of the studio. For the first half of the song, one group play a soft acoustic song with harmonised vocals. A couple of minutes in, their voices fade out as a microphone is walked by hand into the other room by the engineer. Group two then began their near-whisper of a second segment, with their bandmates faintly heard as they continue to belt the chorus of part one.

What’s most remarkable about the approach and execution of these ideas is that they were baked into the creation of the songs from the start. “They are extremely intentional ideas based on having stumbled upon things,” guitarist Mike O’Malley says, with bandmate Jasper Llewellyn adding: “If the record is about anything, it’s about different worlds happening at once. Those movements between worlds and between environments are hard-wired into the actual composition of the song. It’s not added afterwards in production.”

A band with a deeply untraditional approach, caroline manage to make music that feels like it works against the odds. It makes its brilliance all the more satisfying and remarkable.

caroline began in 2017 as a two-piece rock band formed by Llewellyn and Casper Hughes at university. The pair were joined by O’Malley shortly afterwards and made post-punk as a trio including early ideas for the first caroline single, ‘Dark blue’. Since then, their music has both expanded and become thrillingly deconstructed.

Debut album caroline saw songs created by a trio mixed with extended improvised sections and instrumental interludes. caroline 2’s songs are shorter and more focused, but far from simpler. “Our communication between the eight of us is much better,” Llewellyn says of the band’s evolution, with the band developing a musical language deeper and richer than before owing to a good chunk of time on the road together.

Watch caroline live and you can see this near-telepathic connection. On all eight faces during their shows are looks of deep concentration, but also a trust in their dynamics and musical interplay. They perform live in a horseshoe formation, feeling their way through the songs together in intoxicating fashion.

“We had built a musical language together over the years,” Llewellyn says, with this new chemistry seeping into the creation of the new album. “A band that’s just forming person by person doesn’t really have a strong sense of itself as a group, and it makes writing music longer and more difficult. Now, we’re very much a group.”

Despite the intricacies and unusual nature of the band, O’Malley describes caroline 2 as being created with a more “traditional” approach than the band had planned. “I think we were putting off trying to write a second record because there were so many question marks, and no one really knew what it was supposed to be,” he says. “We had one concept for the record going in, and we stuck to that for probably the first two hours of the first writing session. Then it just turned into something else.”

Llewellyn explains: “We had this plan to do this Talk Talk-inspired thing of loads of improvising, because that’s what we’ve been doing on tour, and then chopping it up. In the back of my mind, I had thought that that was quicker and easier than actually having to write a whole new set of songs. A slightly lazy part of my mind thought that was the only way I could really imagine this being done.”

In the end, caroline 2 ends up with much less improvisation than its predecessor. Some of the musical flourishes might sound like spur-of-the-moment additions, but it’s all meticulously crafted and considered. Despite having eight members, the album also feels beautifully airy and spacious, with not a single note wasted.

They also enlist the help of namesake Caroline Polachek on the gorgeous ‘Tell me I never knew that’, a song whose vocal melody reminded the band of Polachek. They reached out to her and received an emphatic yes to the idea of adding vocals.

“I think she just completely gets it,” Llewellyn says of her connection with the band. “She was into the first record, and we didn’t have to explain anything about what we were doing.”

At the end of the song, another handbrake turn occurs as Polachek leaves the frame and an Auto-Tuned vocal sings: “It always has been / It always will be / This always happens.” Lyrics like this define the album, with a preference for dismembered lines preferred to storytelling prose. “They’re not poetry,” Wordsworth says. “They’re always very beautiful, but there’s an irreverence to form. Eight members are playing, and the lyrics are just the ninth thing.”

The Auto-Tune device is also used throughout the record, one of the most striking sonic changes from the band’s debut album, with O’Malley saying: “We liked how it provided all these different characters within [the songs].” First stumbled upon when the band recorded a cover of a song by Los Angeles artist Claire Rousay – known for her Auto-Tune-drowned recordings – it became a pillar of the creation of the new album.

It’s just one of countless examples of how caroline 2 uses unusual techniques in thrilling ways, but always to service songs that are excellent at their core. On this specific detail, but relevant to caroline 2 at large, O’Malley affirms: “It’s not an effect – it’s the point.”