Continuing the dreamy motifs presented on Desire, I Want to Turn Into You, Caroline Polachek has given listeners another taste of one of the bonus tracks from her forthcoming deluxe edition of the album. And who better to help her with that task than the equally dreamy stylings of Weyes Blood? Assisting with a reworked version of track ten on the record, “Butterfly Net” (co-produced with Danny L Harle), Weyes Blood layers the sonic offering with her own rich vocals for an effect that’s altogether ethereal.
As part of the Everasking Edition of Desire…, Polachek chooses a fitting song to punctuate the date she’s choosing to re-release the record: Valentine’s Day. Just as she did the same for the original version of the record. On the remixed version of “Butterfly Net” (once again co-produced by Danny L Harle), there are marked distinctions. Not just because of Weyes Blood’s presence, but the entire reworked sound. Alone in Polachek’s hands, the song is actually less bittersweet, and more tinged with a Beth Orton vibe. The music, too, is more stripped down on the original. And while the remix might initially sound almost a capella, it builds toward a burst of decidedly 90s-inspired power ballad glory—but with a more acoustic emphasis.
Toward the end of the three-minute mark, a repeated, siren-like chant speaks to the mermaid-esque cover art of the single. Displaying Weyes Blood and Polachek “caught” in what looks more like a fishing net than a butterfly net, positioned and aesthetically styled in such a way that it’s almost as though you can’t tell where one chanteuse begins and the other ends. This all being punctuated by a black background that lends a somber air to it, a note of finality. What’s more, the two look like something out of Lana Del Rey’s “Music to Watch Boys To” video (complete with their donning of headphones), you know, the underwater scenes that also got repurposed for the “Freak” video.
As a love song that speaks not to “being caught” by someone else, but rather, to trying to “catch [their] light,” it makes an ideal addition to the annals of “love gone wrong” tracks. Even if it is not as straightforward as other songs of that genre (e.g., Justin Timberlake’s “Cry Me A River,” Eamon’s “Fuck It” and Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” among many other “love gone wrong” numbers by her). When Polachek and Weyes Blood sing in harmony, “There you were/With your mirror/Shining the world all over me/There I was/With my butterfly net/Trying to catch your light,” there is the implication that the song refers to two people who can never quite “align.” Whether that means emotionally or physically—or both—the result is the same: an unbearable poignancy. A keen sense of regret over not having been able to make something work.
Then again, some people can satisfy themselves with the idea that “at least” something was able to work out for a while, at a certain time and place in one’s life. Even if not “forever,” as the monogamist propaganda so often leads us to believe. Indeed, there’s a few other songs on Desire, I Want to Turn Into You that acknowledge the disconnect between romantic expectation versus reality. And yet, a song like “Fly to You” featuring Grimes and Dido explores the kind of love that is more resilient, able to bounce back from various fights and mood swings. Less lyrically abstract than “Butterfly Net,” Polachek asks on “Fly to You,” “Will you still love me after the bend?/Remember what’s gone before, not loaded with regret/Ooh, I fly to you/After all the tears, you’re all I need.” It’s a sharp contrast to the conceptual sentiments of “Butterfly Net,” especially with Polachek and Weyes Blood singing the lyrics, “Faithful inertia/Her bullet doesn’t slow/It seeks and finds me/How far it goes/Heaven help me/Take this bag of wings/And drown it in the Thames/And wake tomorrow/Hollow/Hardly forgetting.”
These symbolic lyrics are also in contrast to another more exuberant song that leads up to the original “Butterfly Net,” “Blood and Butter.” And yet, Polachek still knows how to allude to the intermixed pain and pleasure of love as she croons, “Let me dive through your face to the sweetest kind of pain/Call you up/Nothing to say/No, I don’t need no entertaining/When the world/Is a bed” and “Look how I forget who I was/Before I was the way I am with you.” This latter statement can double as being either “good” or “bad.” Falling into the latter category when one loses their entire sense of identity in a relationship.
That Polachek chose “Butterfly Net” as the song from Desire… to rework (and not just because she had already performed it live a few times with Weyes Blood) seems telling of her, er, desire to return to a song that is more ambiguous about love everlasting (not everasking). On the one hand, it seems she’s saying that she has found the person who will “last,” manifest in the verse, “I collected stupid ashes/So that after you’d gone/I could hold onto somеthing/But you stayed unwavering/Through evеry false goodbye/Unsubsiding/Pining/For now and for never” (the “for never” being indicative of her unfaltering realism). On the other, some irrepressible part of her knows she should still continue to remain on her guard about falling fully prey to such notions, with Weyes Blood joining her for the bridge that goes, “Oh, if only/The umbrella of the sky/Could wrap us up and up/That’s where I’d zoom in close/Dilated as your eyes/Until then, I’ll keep it brief.” Then there is that oft-repeated line about trying to catch someone’s light, as though, instead, all they’re ever met with is a series of near misses while trapped in darkness (which is what the single’s cover art alludes to).
In effect, the re-release of “Butterfly Net” not only highlights the larger themes of Desire…, but also makes one realize that Polachek could easily add another bonus track to the Everasking Edition that provides a riff on The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” that goes, “‘Cause it’s a bittersweet symphony that’s love/Try to make someone want you forever/You’re a slave to the feeling then you get shoved.”
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