Caribou:
Swim

Paste Rating

8.5

commendable

User Rating

(7 votes)

8.6

Your Rating

0.0

Swim to the surface

With his high, ghostly voice and ear for the eerie, Dan Snaith’s dance collages are less the stuff of a Saturday night at the disco and more 4 a.m. in a dark, seedy club. Under his nom-de-plume Caribou, his 2008 Polaris Music Prize-winning Andorra melted a heavy helping of electronica over ‘60s garage rock, but Swim favors the former, with Snaith’s repetitious vocals and synths quivering under the weight of a muffled bass. Snaith abandons both traditional song structures and rock sounds, and the album plays like a 43-minute musical kaleidoscope—bells, horns, handclaps, saxophone and piano all mixing with terse beats. The shadowy electronics flow from the subdued funk of opener “Odessa” through the slow-motion “Lalibela,” leaving “Jamelia” as the lone rave-up. The song builds on blips and bleeps until Snaith howls the album’s only shout-along chorus. Though a few more outbursts could’ve given Swim more punch, it stays afloat—austere, chilling and beautiful.