THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

POLIÇA, founded by vocalist Channy Leaneagh and producer Ryan Olson out of the ashes of Minneapolis collective Gayngs, and featuring Drew Christopherson, and Ben Ivascu on drums and Chris Bierden on bass, came seemingly from nowhere with their debut ‘Give You The Ghost’, released in April 2012 and which became one of that year’s most beloved albums. 

Born out of a tumultuous, head spinning subsequent 18 months POLIÇA released their second album Shulamith in October 2013, the album named in homage to pioneering feminist activist and thinker Shulamith Firestone with cover banned by Apple and hit singles including “Chain My Name” and the Justin Vernon featuring “Tiff”.

Musically, ‘Shulamith’ demonstrated an increased mastery and extension of the unique sonic palette that POLIÇA mined on their debut album. The recording process was naturally a more collaborative process than their debut, with the band reacting to and working off Olsen’s beats, drawing on elements of R&B, electronica and dub to create a sound that, already, this early in their career, is uniquely and identifiably their own. Leaneagh’s continued exploration of, and increased control over the effects processor to manipulate and enhance her already outstanding voice take her vocals to new and unusual heights.

'Shulamith' reaffirmed POLIÇA as one of the most fascinating and vital groups in forward-thinking pop. Ultimately, Channy succinctly summed up the ideas and themes behind ‘Shulamith’, and POLIÇA as follows: “Drums. Bass. Synths. Me, Women”.

2023 marks 10 years since the release of 'Shulamith' and this double LP edition comes on blue opaque vinyl.

TRACK LISTING

Chain My Name
Smug
Vegas
Warrior Lord
Very Cruel
Torre
Trippin
Tiff (featuring Justin
Vernon)
Spilling Lines
Matty
I Need $
So Leave

Recorded mostly from 2020-2021 in Ryan Olson’s Minneapolis studio with lyrics written and recorded by Channy Leaneagh in her room, Madness is an experimental expansion of the 4 piece family band of Chris Bierden (bass), Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu (drums) to include the anthropomorphic production tool “AllOvers(c)”, designed by Olson and fellow producer & sound-artist Seth Rosetter.

This latest release continues within the collaborative enclave in which POLIÇA resides and includes co-production by Dustin Zahn (“Alive” & “Away”), Alex Ridha and Alex Nutter (“Violence”). First single from the album is the anthemic pulse of “Alive” which Channy Leaneagh describes as follows: “Bad things happen, the fire goes out; even with the best flammables it stays dark until nothing matters becomes the fire itself. Channy sums up the lyrics and the startling artwork for Madness as follows: “I am here for you all and I am never truly myself here. I am her for you all and I am never truly her”.

POLIÇA began in Minneapolis in 2011 when singer Channy Leaneagh started collaborating with Ryan Olson, the producer of Jagjaguwar signed soft rock collective Gayngs, on a new batch of synthesizer and percussion-heavy arrangements. Channy was in the process of emerging from a personal and creative break up, with this informing much of the lyrical content of the songs. The resulting debut album, 2012's Give You The Ghost, immediately garnered international acclaim, with Rolling Stone hailing it as "the sound of heartbreak and celebration happening simultaneously" and Q praising it as "a bewitching, urgent, magical debut." Bon Iver meanwhile declared that POLIÇA were “best band I've ever heard” and Jay-Z weighed in with a co-sign. The record became known for Channy's electronically manipulated vocals (using a TC-Helicon voice processor) that lent the album much of its uniqueness as heard on tracks such as Lay Your Cards Out and Dark Star. The albums Shulamith and United Crushers followed in 2013 and 2016 respectively before the release of 2020’s When We Stay Alive. Madness serves as something of a companion piece to When We Stay Alive and Channy sums up the lyrics and the startling artwork for it follows: “I am here for you all and I am never truly myself here. I am her for you all and I am never truly her”.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: The thoroughly modern, sleek synthpop of POLIÇA takes a new turn with 'Madness', the instrumentation as shimmering and vivid as ever, but with Leangh's voice being abstracted and stretched into more futurist shapes. Brilliant.

TRACK LISTING

Alive
Violence
Away
Madness
Blood
Fountain
Sweet Memz

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2022 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

10-year anniversary of POLICA 's classic debut album Give You The Ghost, repressed on limited edition white opaque vinyl and limited to 1,500 worldwide. Give You The Ghost was one of 2012's standout debut albums, marrying as it did post-rock and R&B to stunning effect, leading Bon Iver's Justin Vernon to describe them then as "the best band he'd ever heard".

Give You The Ghost's influence on sonics and production can still being felt to this day. Lead singer Channy Leaneagh's delicate yet visceral vocals, occasionally and subtly manipulated by a Helicon 5, formed a sweet harmonic partnership with Chris Bierden's bass riffs. This, matched with the twin attack of drummers Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu and the anti-production techniques of fifth member Ryan Olson, made POLICA a unique proposition, as demonstrated on singles Lay Your Cards Out, Dark Star and Wandering Star. A break out performance at 2012's SXSW saw them booked for TV slots on Jimmy Fallon and Later with Jools Holland, plus a plethora of festivals including Coachella and Glastonbury. 

TRACK LISTING

A1 Amongster
A2 I See My Mother
A3 Violent Games
A4 Dark Star
A5 Form
B1 The Maker
B2 Lay Your Cards Out
B3 Fist, Teeth, Money
B4 Happy Be Fine
B5 Wandering Star
B6 Leading To Death

When Poliça’s Channy Leaneagh fell off her roof while clearing ice in early 2018, she smashed her L1 vertebrae and battered her spine, leaving her in a brace with limited mobility for months. Yet Poliça’s fourth album, When We Stay Alive, is not about one debilitating accident. It’s about the redemptive power of rewriting your story in order to heal, and reclaiming your identity as a result.

When We Stay Alive possesses a new confidence in its sound, reflected in its fierce, determined songs and anchored by the heavy synths and punctuating beats of Poliça co-founder and producer Ryan Olson. Over the last several years Olson and Leaneagh have widely collaborated with musicians from all over the world: both with Bon Iver, and Leaneagh individually with Boys Noize, Lane 8, Sasha, Leftfield, and Daniel Wohl; Olson with Swamp Dogg in addition to countless musicians from the Aaron Dessner and Justin Vernon’s 37d03d collective. As a result, When We Stay Alive features one of the largest musical casts of any Poliça record to date. To create the album, Olson brought his favorite collaborators into his studio for all-night sessions. He’d then send Leaneagh the files to write lyrics to while recovering at home, which she’d record alone or with engineer Alex Proctor. Drummers Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu colored the songs with a new approach – drastically changing the rhythmic dynamic from previous efforts by creating an indistinguishable hybrid of live and electronic instrumentation--and bassist Chris Bierden provided a melody-laden low-end as well as more layered backing vocals than ever before.

On Poliça’s first three albums, Leaneagh focused on restructuring the world and her relationships within it. On When We Stay Alive, she realizes the power in restructuring her inner self. The album’s title references the idea of moving forward through life – our experiences, both good and bad – and what happens next with the strength we find. “I had been living unconsciously in past trauma,” Leaneagh says. “I don’t want to deny something happened – this is not about repression – it’s about taking the power back from the past, holding the power in the present, and creating a new story for myself.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Brilliantly bold and beautifully textured, Poliça's 5th LP has a perfect mix of downbeat, percussive synth numbers and more propulsive, shadowy offerings. Dynamically astute and beautifully rendered, this is a disparate but never obtuse triumph from the superb Poliça.

TRACK LISTING

1. Driving
2. TATA
3. Fold Up
4. Feel Life
5. Little Threads
6. Be Again
7. Steady
8. Forget Me Now
9. Blood Moon
10. Sea Without Blue

‘United Crushers’ is POLIÇA’s third full length release and most remarkable album yet. Lead singer Channy Leaneagh and non-touring fifth member producer Ryan Olson wrote the album in Minneapolis in the winter of 2015 and recorded it at the renowned Sonic Ranch Studios in El Paso, TX with their live line up of dual drummers, Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu, Chris Beirden on bass. The new album builds on POLIÇA’s signature synthesizer and percussion-heavy sounds with more complex arrangements, tighter grooves and a bigger, crisper hi fi punch.

The record, a tribute to their hometown of Minneapolis, was named after the graffiti tag seen throughout the city as a reminder of its bleak past and uncertain future and is short for “United States of Dreams Be Crushed.” Even at its darkest, the record is musically the band's most upbeat and celebratory. It is a weapon meant to empower the weak, the forgotten, and the disenfranchised; its very creation an act of rebellion in the face of the hopelessness that casts such a long shadow over Middle America's slow urban decline.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: This record, more so than 2014's Shulamith oozes a sort of dystopian dread, displayed through repetitive synth-swells and rippling arpeggios. Though this is in many ways a record about decay, it seems hopeful, like there is something to be gained by adapting. Through adversity comes triumph. This is a bleak yet upbeat offering, dynamic, and exciting.

TRACK LISTING

Summer Please
Lime Habit
Someway
Wedding
Melting Block
Top Coat
Lately
Fish
Berlin
Baby Sucks
Kind
Lose You

Poliça return with their second album ‘Shulamith’, the follow up to 2012’s universally acclaimed breakthrough debut ‘Give You The Ghost’. 

Founded by vocalist Channy Leaneagh and producer Ryan Olson out of the ashes of Minneapolis collective Gayngs, and featuring Drew Christopherson and Ben Ivascu on drums and Chris Bierden on bass, Poliça’s ‘Give You The Ghost’ was released in April of 2012. Seemingly from nowhere it became one of 2012’s standout debut albums. The band made their UK live debut in June 2012, with two packed nights at the tiny Camp Basement in London, and less than a year later, March 2013 saw the band play a triumphant show to a sold out Shepherds Bush Empire. 

From the flurry of warped metallic electronica and razorsharp groove of opener ‘Chain My Name’, with its stark and rushing refrain, the angular R&B-pop futurism of ‘I Need $’, its sweetly earworm hook belying lyrics of alternately helplessness and defiance, to the gliding, bird’s eye meditation of closer ‘So Leave’, ‘Shulamith’ reaffirms Poliça as one of the most fascinating and vital groups in forward-thinking pop.

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: A lot of excitement around this unique band at the moment and they don't disappoint. Album number Two is even better than their debut and it's not often you can say that, is it? Mesmerising.