Band of the Week: Caribou

Hometown: London, England
Fun Fact: Caribou sole proprietor Dan Snaith recently received a doctorate in mathematics from Imperial College at the University of London.
Why It's Worth Watching: No longer simply an electronic artist, the chameleonic Snaith has created a rich, layered album of organic sounds and soaring melodies.
For Fans Of: The Beach Boys, Kraftwerk, Hot Chip

Many artists seek out faraway places for inspiration. They build studios in forests, record in swimming pools, or play instruments on the streets of noisy cities, believing that their immediate surroundings can lead to great musical inspiration. While such grand geographic statements can occasionally lead to triumph, simplicity can also be effective. As a matter of fact, in order to create the latest Caribou release, Andorra, the only setting that Dan Snaith needed was his London bedroom.

Snaith, who once went by Manitoba before legal ramifications involving the lead singer of The Dictators intervened, has been making electronic music largely by himself for a long time. And though his self-described “controlling personality” has remained intact, the music itself has evolved. “In the past, most of the music has been kind of droney,” Snaith says. “[It was] based on a loop, based on one or two chords by choice.” But instead of slowly building upon a sample and playing around with combinations, Snaith chose a different approach on Andorra. “Everything was kind of planned,” he says. “[I was] writing the songs rather than letting them develop kind of like loops.”

The new process dictated the actual music, and as a result, Andorra sounds very different than earlier Caribou/Manitoba albums. No longer focused on building by using fragments, Snaith composed and orchestrated his songs, so that they were written before they were recorded. He then took the next logical step of playing almost every instrument on the album. “There are some samples, but there are very few on this record,” he says. Occasionally, he would “go through records and find something that fits,” but in the privacy of his bedroom, he came up with almost everything he needed using tangible, old-fashioned instruments.

The sound Snaith came up with is dreamy and majestic, and as a result, Andorra is a melodic, noisy album full of grand crescendos and sudden moments of stark, electronics. Percussion—raw, loud, and forceful—is one of the album’s major strengths. Snaith has used double drum kits in live shows, and though, he says, “a lot of the drums were recorded in my bedroom with one microphone,” the effect is something like a marching band interrupting a Beach Boys concert. Snaith's cool, detached voice is also more present than ever, though on “She’s The One,” he collaborates with good friend and Junior Boy, Jeremy Greenspan, who takes over vocal duties on the track.

Snaith’s grand sonic ambition extends far beyond his bedroom and into a wide array of musical reference points and intense, acclaimed live shows, but Andorra is the best testament to his vision so far. One of the better-sequenced albums of the year, it slowly reveals a diversity that has become a Caribou trademark. “I really like that this album starts out with euphoric sounding pop songs and turns a corner and ends up sounding different from where you expected it,” Snaith says. “Things are unraveling on the last couple songs—they’re unsettling in that way. Things are a little less tightly tied together.” Still, without a doubt, it’s clear that on Andorra, Snaith possesses total control.