A year after the release of Pang, Caroline Polachek has dropped a 10-minute extended mix of “The Gate.”
The former Chairlift singer describes the track as an “ambient epilogue” built to loop, with “textural contributions” from Oneohtrix Point Never and Danny L Harle. Directed by Ezra Miller, the ethereal clip features swirling images across land and sky. “Standing at the gate/I come here every day/Just to see your face,” she sings.
“In the original version of the song, the closing lyric (‘Finally, there’s a way/To be both free and safe’) are the words I’m waiting to hear, but never do,” Polachek said in a statement. “The extended version of the song then is a sort of parallel universe or alternate ending, where those words not only arrive, but ring true.”
Pang is Polachek’s first solo effort released under her own name. It follows 2017’s Drawing the Target Around the Arrow, credited to CEP. Ahead of the release of Pang last fall, she dropped videos for the tracks “Door,” “Ocean of Tears,” and “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings.” The album featured contributions from Teddy Geiger, PC Music’s A.G. Cook, Jim-E Stack, and more.
In an Instagram post, Polachek expounded on how the song came together one night in Brooklyn: “I was feeling very isolated and lonely that night, knowing that nobody was at their phones but still checking over and over… it felt like I’d been waiting at a closed gate for someone to return the notes I’d been passing through and nobody was appearing. I switched on my Juno-106 and my fingers found their way to these chords.. I played them over and over, it felt so hopeful and comforting. The lyrics came out of nowhere, and I realized it was the paradoxical message I’d been waiting to hear that night and probably never would.”