Our Love.

Though his current stage name may invoke the quintessentially Canadian symbol of the majestic Caribou, the man known legally as Dan Snaith creates music that is anything but traditional. He started out his career under the nomme de plume, Manitoba, releasing both 2001’s Start Breaking My Heart and 2003’s Up in Flames, great examples of the lowtempo, post-trip hop electronica of the time, but Mr. Snaith soon found himself in legal trouble. Unfortunately for Snaith, Richard “Handsome Dick” Manitoba of the early punk-rock group The Dictators, threatened to sue unless he changed his name. Though quite upset with the state of affairs, saying himself that the situation was “like The Smiths suing John Smith or something” (I can’t say his analogy is actually a very accurate representation of the issue but I understand his frustration), he did what he must and changed his name to Caribou. Though he has also released music under the moniker Daphni, it is as Caribou he is most well known, especially after his most popular work from 2010, Swim featuring the hit, Odessa.

One of Caribou’s defining characteristics as a musician is his ascription to the minimalistic, and no where is this more profoundly felt in his last few releases than this, the most recent, Our Love. Though without the dark overtures of Swim, or the jangling melodies of Andorra, Our Love finds a happy middle ground, a goldilocks effect if you will, between mellow undercurrents and synth-capped rapids.

It can be unfortunate when your favourite song on an album is the first, it makes the rest of the album feel a bit lacking on first contact and generally requires an audio pallet cleanse before one can fully appreciate the rest of the album. Well Can’t Do Without You put me in such a predicament. This smooth R&B throwback features Snaith’s gentle trace of a beat with a looped vocal track, creating a relaxed and absorbing vibe for the listener. Luckily upon re-listen, and re-listen and re-listen (a practise I can’t stress the importance of enough, many albums don’t sound great on first take and require being given another shot to enjoy – this could happen for various reasons both internal, ie. maybe you’ve been listening to Geto Boys for 5 hours straight beforehand, or external such as an artist deliberately making  an album somewhat impenetrable by design) I grew to really appreciate the piece as a whole.

Snaith goes through many different profiles of sound within Our Love, utilising both the underwhelming, simmering vibes we’re used to, as well as building progressions into grandiose crescendos that show a fullness of sound not often attempted in the past. Caribou’s vocals are also very prominent on the album, a definite plus since the tracks he’s sung on have always been my favourites. All I Ever Need and Can’t Do Without You definitely top the list of his vocal songs, while others sans-voix do just as well to show off his skills. Tracks like Julia Brightly, Our Love and Mars are great for fulfilling the atmosphere created in the album and serve as key emotional linkages throughout the record’s progression.

If this is your first time listening to Caribou, make sure to check out his older albums too as he’s been making great music for a while now, if you’re an old fan then you’l doubtlessly be impressed by his latest saga through sound, Our Love.

 

Can’t Do Without You

 

Our Love