Weekly Release Spotlight: Caribou

Posted on 8/22/2007

Caribou

Andorra

[Merge]

Hippies. They are the only ones that could legitimately talk about Caribou's new disc Andorra in the context of 60s psychedelia music, from which supposedly a lot of the album's aesthetic comes from. Skinny pale boys with glasses that happen to enjoy a bowl of granola while they are transfixed by various RSS feeds are not hippies. So I will not even pretend I comprehend the retro homage and neo-transfigurations of all these flute sounds and swirling atmospherics on the new Caribou album.

But that does not mean I can't appreciate them. There's a whole decade of pop music that pushed psychological and spiritual limits with its listeners that I'm not familiar with, but the overwhelming numbers that Caribou's Dan Snaith and co. have developed for Andorra don't dwell on the past that may or may not have influenced them. Rather, it is very much concerned with the present. Snaith called himself Manitoba when he was focused on instrumental bedroom electronica that pulsated, wandered, and was generally the musical equivalent of a cold post-apocalyptic future world that still had a glimpse of hope. He then went by Caribou for 2005's The Milk of Human Kindness with an array of autumnal electronic sounds and presented buried vocals into a mix of robotic acoustics.

Andorra takes the next logical step in his progression toward the human. Instead of vaulting himself further and further into the mysterious and incalculable future, he brings himself closer and closer to dealing with the world in which we live today. However, this isn't just a modernist record with digital flourishes. It's the sound of someone presently living in what is already futuristic world, scrambling to hold on to that which is natural before it quickly fades away.

The protagonist's anthem "Melody Day" begins the record with a wallop of celebration and uneasiness. In the record's middle, the magnificent "She's the One" bares all with stilted vocal loops undercutting the balladry of Snaith's hopeless romantic lead. The penultimate "Irene" gets even quieter with a gorgeous Rhodes piano bed, perhaps the most organic-sounding electric instrument. It eventually fades into white noise, preparing for a peaceful chaos that Caribou seems to be predicting for us--for the future of our present times.

Stream: Caribou - Melody Day