"Poison seems old-fashioned/and hired help's no fun," Caroline Polachek sneers, like some snarling villainess or scenery-chewing femme fatale. She's talking... murder! Most foul. And, "Sidewalk Safari" seems to be about that favorite passtime of video-gamers: mowing down pedestrians in an automobile.
"I'm on a sidewalk safari/if I see you on the street, you better run!" Polachek warns, and doubles her delight on the simple refrain: "I'm going to hunt you down/I'm going to run you down." The chorus finds Polachek in fine voice, warbling gloriously; and there's no doubt, with Aaron Pfenning having departed Chairlift to chase Rewards, that she's now the star of this show.
And, where the super-patchy Does You Inspire You dabbled in genre and strode country-style at times, Chairlift seem to have settled into a singular sound in advance of their 2012-due second LP, Something.
Like "Amanaemonesia," the happily-polysyllabic synth-pop single that preceded it, there's a hint of wackiness to "Sidewalk Safari." The synths are busy, the bass is funky, the programming trips over itself with skittish polyrhythms. That kookiness seems like a logical progression for a band who sang an ode to landfill last time around...
Chairlift, "Sidewalk Safari"
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