Caribou, and the new track "Odessa"

Today I'll talk about music.  Specifically, I'll talk about one of my favorite artists, Caribou.  That is the name under which Dan Snaith records.  As with many of my recent posts, this has nothing to do with photography, but I feel like writing and I don't have any new photos to talk about.  I suppose I could write about how much I would like to buy a new camera, the Canon 5d MkII, but that isn't going to get anywhere.  So I'll talk about Dan Snaith aka Caribou and his music.

I bought my first CD by Caribou a few years back in Madison, Wisconsin.  I was visiting the university to give a talk and was killing time before a dinner with a visit to a CD store.  They had some CDs by Manitoba, which was the name Snaith was recording under at the time.  I had never heard of Snaith, or the band Manitoba, but since I went to elementary school in Winnipeg, and have family there, I was surprised and pleased that anyone would name a band after the province.  I was even more tickled to see that some of the track titles on one CD, Up in Flames, related to Canada.  For example, there was one track titled "Dundas, Ontario" and another titled "Brandon".  I assumed, perhaps incorrectly, that it referred to Brandon, Manitoba, which I believe is the 2nd largest city in Manitoba.  I bought Up in Flames and Start Breaking My Heart.

I returned to my hotel room after dinner and listened to the CDs on my laptop and was blown away.  I had bought them mainly as a novelty, and wasn't sure what to expect.  I had some hopes since Canada produces a lot of talented musicians, some of whom hail from Winnipeg, or at least spend time there, but was prepared to be disappointed.  Well, I wasn't.  This was a completely unique, intricately layered sound that I couldn't compare to anything I had ever heard before.

Later, I bought Milk of Human Kindness and was even more pleased.  By this time, Snaith was recording as Caribou because of bizarre complications with the name Manitoba that you can read about on the web with a little searching.  This was just as creative and novel as Up in Flames and Start Breaking My Heart, but to my ears at least, tighter and more disciplined, the working of a maturing artist.  This was also something I could play for my wife.  Then came Andorra and I was even more hooked.  My favorite tracks on Andorra is probably "After Hours" for its intensive, relentless beat.

Around that time, I saw that Caribou was touring, and would play at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.  I talked my wife into going with me.  I had played Andorra for her so she was prepared, but this was still pretty new for her, since she is from Taiwan and tends toward honey-voiced romantic balladeers like Fei Yuqing (费玉清) and so forth. 

It was spectacular.   I had never been to a rock concert in such a small, intimate venue before.  I used to attend concerts in high school and college, but usually in stadiums, never in small clubs.  We were in the front row of balcony.  What made the strongest impression on me was the percussion.  It was loud.  Our ears rang for two days afterward, but it was incredibly tight.  Snaith and another percussionist were going at it and I just couldn't believe that two people could drum that loud and that fast, but remain completely tight.  It was amazing to me that such a small number of people could produce such an intricate sound.  Somehow I take it for granted listening to a CD, which I always assume reflects lots of studio work, but it was inspiring to see a live show like this where this small group was recreating the incredibly intricate sounds of the CD, live.  I loved it, and more importantly, my wife loved it, and added Caribou to her rotation along with her Taiwanese and HK pop ballads.

I was really pleased when I saw on Caribou's twitter feed that he had a new record called Swim coming out, and a track from it called "Odessa" was available.  I just listened to it at an entry at the Hero Hill site and once again, it's great.  It is a real departure from the sound on Andorra, which was an evolution of the sound on Milk of Human Kindness, which in turn was a real departure from the sound on "Up in Flames" and "Start Breaking My Heart".  For the first few seconds I thought about Beck's "Cellphone's Dead" and then afterward it opened up into an incredible and impossible to characterize mixture.  There are layers and layers of different sounds, that seem to always be on the verge of collapsing into chaos, but somehow it all works beautifully, and everything makes sense.  I'm really looking forward to the album, and hope Caribou comes through LA so we can see him again.

If you want to download and listen to Caribou's new track, check out his website.  Overall, it seems like these few months are good for album releases from some of the musicians that I like.  Monolake and Four Tet and The Field all came out with albums recently that are pretty good, Caribou has one on the way.  And I have this idea, perhaps incorrect, that Brad Mehldau and Thievery Corporation are at work on new albums.

One other neat thing about Caribou: he has a PhD in mathematics from Imperial College.  Indeed, he seems to come from a family of mathematicians.  If you search on Google Scholar, you can find what I assume is his dissertation.  I really admire anyone who starts out as an academic, but ends up doing something even more interesting.