Angèle, Caroline Polachek, SebastiAn — “Love Triangle”

There are worse love triangles to find yourself in. Angèle, Caroline Polachek and SebastiAn have assembled one where choosing sides feels both impossible and beside the point. “Love Triangle” skirts that particularly dangerous line between pop song and controlled mayhem, constantly giving you something gorgeous to grab onto before SebastiAn pulls it somewhere stranger.

Put this on in the bedroom and whatever happens next is probably less seduction than interpretive sheet dance. Someone is dramatically pulling the duvet across the room. A fitted sheet has become a veil. Nobody is entirely sure what we're expressing, but SebastiAn's production has made stopping feel artistically irresponsible. The details are that distracting: electronic sounds twitch, collide and disappear while Angèle and Polachek somehow remain impossibly composed above the commotion.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Angèle (@angele_vl)

Which brings us to the hook. Angèle and Polachek start to feel like the angel and devil stationed on opposite shoulders, except somebody made the catastrophic decision to let them sing in harmony. Now the advice sounds equally beautiful from both directions and we're fucked. The lyrics don't exactly promise a clean resolution either. Somebody's heart is going to break; that's apparently just how this geometry works.

“Love Triangle” arrives ahead of Angèle's Instinct, due October 16, but it already makes a compelling case for whatever strange little universe that record is building. Three points. No straight answers. An excellent place to get stuck.