Quick Before it Melts

Tuesday 20 April 2010

QBiM SPiNS: Caribou Swim

For certified thirtysomething music geeks like me, there’s still a certain romanticism with the image of a one-man band holed up in his bedroom twiddling knobs, creating massive musical soundscapes with little more than a drum machine and a few discarded pots and pans.  Dan Snaith graduated from bedroom recordings to full a full working, but he still manages to captivate and mystify on the latest Caribou album with a less-is-more, minimalist aesthetic.

Swim is much more organic sounding in comparison to its predecessor, the Polaris Prize winning Andorra.  Whereas his last LP was a dense, psychedelic collision of sound, Swim‘s fluid beats have space around them and room to breathe.  It may sound like a very literal interpretation of the album’s name, but that was Snaith’s thinking all along, claiming on Pitchfork that he wanted to make “…dance music that sounds like it’s made out of water…”.  “Sun” pulses like blasts of radiation from a core of jazzy, trip-hop beats, while “Odessa” bobs up and down on waves of rhythm like a tiny pebble perpetually skipping across the water.  It could all go horribly awry, falling into alt. hipster dinner music territory, but Snaith’s trademark quirkiness saves proceedings here from sinking into a sea of repetition and redundancy.  “Kaili” doesn’t lend itself easily to gyrations on the dancefloor, but your ears will get a workout treading through the layers of horns, woodwinds and vocals.  It’s a whirpool that will suck you into its centre and drown you in sound.  The most arresting moment on Swim has to be “Bowls” but be forewarned:  listening to it on headphones for the first time may induce throbbing deep inside your skull.  Whether it’s because of it’s economy of sound and time (9 songs, 43 minutes and change), there’s is not a dud on Swim.  Even the brief “Lalibela”–the closest thing to filler on this record–is the perfect bridge between “Hannibal” and “Jamelia”.

Snaith worked with Junior Boys’ Jeremy Greenspan and Keiran “Four Tet” Hebden on Swim, and their influence is evidenced throughout (see “Hannibal” for example).  Album closer “Jamelia” features Luke Lalonde of Born Ruffians on vocals and is a fitting end to a record that makes Snaith’s other discs sound like they’re just treading water.  This is Album of the Year material.

MP3: Caribou “Odessa”
Video: Caribou “Odessa”
Myspace: Caribou

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by J. Di Gioia | 1 Comment »

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 20th, 2010 at 11:30 am and is filed under MP3, QBiM SPiNS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.