Andorra [CD]

I have been eagerly awaiting the new Caribou album (as with all Dan Snaith's releases)...and I have to admit that this is some of the best material he has ever produced! Its the first time Dan has gone for a more song based approach,and seems like the next logical progressive step from his previous works, with vocals on every track and Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys providing lyrics and voice to stand out track "She's the One".
The album has a distinctive 60's retro sound and comparisons could be made to various Psyche/Pop bands from that era, but that would be missing the point...Opener,"Melody Day" sets the scene with its lush falsetto vocals and sleigh bells and lets you know from the start that you are experincing something remarkable.This is truely fresh and exciting, and welcomes you with open arms into a dreamlike place that solely exists for the duration of the album.
The highlight for me though has to be "Niobe", the closing track. Its impossible to pigeonhole to a specific style (why would you want to when its this good)and sounds futuristic and ancient at the same time, with an almost trance like feel that holds your full attention.

I am a little biased in my opinion, Ive been a Caribou/Manitoba fan since time began but I think this album will appeal to everyone and not just hardcore followers. This should bring the success and aclaim that Dan Snaith justly deserves...I just cant wait for the next one.

Brian who?

It took me a long time to get over how mediocre Caribou's last album `The Milk of Human Kindness' was. After the psychedelic onslaught of `Up in Flames' (recorded under previous moniker 'Manitoba'), his sophomore record was an exercise in plodding 60s-infused futility. I tried to ignore praise garnered for `Andorra' but got sold on the some of the MP3s doing the rounds, especially the stunning opener `Melody Day'.

So what has changed? Chiefly, Dan Snaith has avoided the musical magpie-ism of some of less inspired contemporaries and peristed with the kaleidoscopic sound that has become his trademark. Instead of hopping onto the next bandwagon, he has spent time refining his song-craft, developing his swirling, sometimes saccharin sonics around more carefully rendered vocal melodies. Not blessed with the stongest voice, he has sounded bland on previous vocal outings. But here he plays to his strengths, his vocals anchoring the melodies but very much in the back of the mix, part of the blurred aesthetics that suggest a spectrum of influences but become more than a sum of their parts.

`Andorra' still suggests Snaith's roving ear for the zeitgesit. Many of the harmonies are very much from the `Animal Collective/Grizzly Bear' school of psychedelia. Furthermore, the excellent `She's The One' features vocals from Jeremy Greenspan, albeit in a style at odds with the synth pop of Junior Boys. Meanwhile, there is something of the early Stone Roses about tracks like `Sandy' and `Eli', with a little Jesus and the Mary Chain thrown in for good measure. One shouldn't be surprised, shoegaze is a Snaith standard, and the current renaissance shows no signs of abating (check out the Magnetic Fields' latest, `Distortion').

Furthermore `Desiree' awakens spring-like from a whimsical folk ditty into a shapeshifting technicolour folktronica, part Panda Bear, part Amorphous Androgynous. `Irene' is beautifully deconstructed, like a resurrected master tape of a 60s pop song, all warped and time-damaged retro, not dissimilar to some Broadcast. Elsewhere `Sundialing' and `Niobe' display leanings towards trance, if not the dancefloor itself. Having moved further away from electronica and closer to more song orientated material, Snaith's best work may yet be ahead of him.

I am not sad that Caribou has been absent for the past few years. Not a bit.

For the record, that doesn't mean that I don't like his music. In fact, I'm glad because Caribou (also known as Daniel V. Snaith) apparently spent his time coming up wiyj "Andorra," an album of psychedelic folkpop that stands way above his past work. It's a magical, almost transcendent little album that never allows you to be bored.

It opens with a swirling, lush little melody, full of bells and twittering flute. "Melody day/what have I done?" Snaith murmurs softly. "Now our hearts are locked up tight again/and when I pray its all begun/and when you smile it melts away again..."

That sound is echoed in "Sandy," which straddles the fence between pastoral pop and psychedelica. And it echoes in the songs that follow: swirling folkpop, languorous indie-rockers, soaring psychedelica, sunny breezy pop melodies, delicate electropop, and ending with the darker, shimmering "Niobe."

"Andorra" is a pretty big departure from Caribou's past work -- he started with jazzy electronica, then dense electro-guitarpop and then the free-form psychedelic dementafolk of "The Milk of Human Kindness." This one sounds more like a 1966 acid trip in a summery meadow -- it's just pure, magical psychedelica, with moments of indie-rock and krautrock thrown in.

It's also his most conventionally poppy work, but that's not a bad thing. While his past works were more about exploration than melody, this one is sheer beauty, with lots of peppy melodies swathed in the instrumentation. "Desiree," for example, is a pretty typical love ballad, but smothered in a cloud of tinkling chimes, jabbing violins and delicate synth.

The music itself is a kaleidoscope of gentle acoustic guitar, strings and expansive keyboard full of chimes, twitters and bubbles. As if that weren't sumptuous enough, Snaith adds on bells, banjo, and a flute that does its best to imitate birdcalls, as well as his own elusively wistful vocals.

"Andorra" is unlike any of Caribou's past work, but it's also the best. Soft, sunny and transcendentally pretty, this is a electronic and psychedelic masterpiece.