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Review
Dan Snaith is a doctor of maths – and with his albums everything seems to add up. Stripped and purified beats sit comfortably with an atmosphere of the ethereal, while Snaith's lullaby vocals lead you into exciting new worlds.
Thirty-two-year-old Snaith – a Canadian currently living in Britain – has been making music for more than 10 years. First he recorded under the Manitoba moniker, before legal shenanigans called for a change to the name Caribou.
Across the course of his career the mild-mannered musician has picked up a host of fans and accomplices. The people he's spent time with, and had playing in his live band, include Four Tet, The Flaming Lips and Sun Ra – and this assortment of associates provide an inkling into the way in which the Caribou sound has developed. There's nothing out of place in Snaith's cerebral music, and this is true of his third album as Caribou.
Snaith has said that he wants to make dance music which sounds more like water than metal, and the swirling and swishing effects on opener Odessa are perfect exemplars of this theory. He almost whispers over the sound waves, but the beats are never anything less than precise. The track – the album’s lead single, too – features a slightly darker edge than we're used to; certainly the rhythms on it are insistent rather than dreamy. Perhaps the subject matter here – which apparently touches on loneliness – is also at play. But Swim, as a whole, is far from a depressing listen – in fact there are moments which are almost transcendental, such as on the uplifting Kaili.
At the other end of the album, the closing Jamelia features the twisted and tribal vocals of Born Ruffians' singer Luke LaLonde. It acts as the sister piece to Swim’s dramatic opener, the two songs bookending a record which could be simply assessed as intelligent dance music. But it offers much more than mere stimulation for body moving.
There is, unquestionably, a mass of fortitude at work from the creator throughout. Further outstanding tracks, Leave House and Bowls, feature tightly regimented, beautifully controlled beats designed to nourish the mind of both maker and listener, as much as they are built to prick ears and jolt limbs. But despite such a sentiment, Swim is never less than instantly enjoyable either. --Chris Beanland
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Swim,
This review is from: Swim (Audio CD)
I only thought I'd review this as I was surprised there had not been any reveiws yet and it deserves one. This is an album of superb, inventive pop music, which seems to carry on where Niobe from his last album Andorra left off. It is catchy but with tons of little sonic surprises that you will catch the more you listen to it. I would struggle to describe it adequately if I tried, and as such I would simply advise that you look up the songs Leave House, Found Out and Sun. That will give you a fairly good taste of what the album is like, and I predict that you will like it and buy it.
16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Come On In - The Water's Lovely !!,
By
This review is from: Swim (Audio CD)
Caribou is Canadian composer/musician Daniel Victor Snaith.'Swim' is his most recent album, having previously released four other albums under the Caribou and Manitoba banners since his 2001 debut ('Start Breaking My Heart'). He is a purveyor of gently rhythmic electronic dreams, although he is also sometimes overtaken momentarily by the need to create a jolly pop song. 'Bees' on his 2005 album 'The Milk Of Human Kindness' and 'Melody Day' on 'Andorra' (2007) are both fine examples of these lapses. The nine compositions on 'Swim' create a powerful and coherent unity whilst retaining plenty of sonic light and shade to sustain our interest and attention. Mr Snaith's fragile but friendly falsetto contributes a distinctive edge to the proceedings. Sometimes bouncing around happily above and between the dance-friendly beats, as in opener 'Odessa' (an addictively twitchy number!); or in others slipping and sliding about like a man negotiating a passage across thin ice ('Found Out' is an especially discombobulating - and lovely - example). The instrumental 'Bowls' is a particularly strong musical idea. A simple hypnotic pulse is overlaid with rich layers of luminous synth arpeggios and gamelan-like percussion. The effect is both exotic and strangely affecting. Canadian temple music at its finest! 'Leave House' combines a jauntily nervous rhythmic and vocal arrangement with a darker, brooding undertow which generates considerable emotional tension. We are left uncertain about the safety of the territory into which Mr Snaith is leading us and this contrast is the track's greatest strength and arguably the album's finest moment. 'Lalibella' is a curious miniature. It bursts into bright being following an almost inaudible introduction, casts its brief spell and returns from whence it came without as much as a by your leave. Final track 'Jamelia' features a pleasantly shifty (almost jazzy) vocal by Luke LaLonde (guitarist and singer with Canadian band Born Ruffians). He does a good job battling between the waves and seismic surges which Mr Snaith has conjured from the depths of his wayward musical imagination. It is a complex and stirring conclusion. Intelligent electronica of the finest pedigree. Recommended.
4.0 out of 5 stars
powerful beats,
This review is from: Swim (Audio CD)
I must say it was a random purchase, but it turned out to be a really good one. Usually I like to pick things on my own and I don't trust all the selection of products 'I might like' just because someone else is telling me to do so. This time I decided to give it a try. I knew that if something came out from ninjatune label it simply couldn't go wrong! I'm a huge fan of their music, I'm absulotely in love with Fink and Bonobo, for those who know what I'm talking about I must say that Caribou is much more playful, funky, electronic than those guys, less acoustic and melancholic, but still great! The bass line is amazing, it's worth listening on good headphones, when you start discovering some of the hidden sounds. Well composed, postive, electryfying album.
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