For new album Andorra, Caribou has used retro sounds as inspiration and springboard.
Combining breathtaking musical nous and a PhD education to frankly sickening effect, 28-year-old Ontario-born operator Dan Snaith has had a stunningly productive early life in music, if not without some bumps.
Forced to abandon his original music moniker, Manitoba, in 2004 thanks to some legal sabre-rattling from ex-Dictators singer Richard 'Handsome Dick' Manitoba, Snaith regrouped impressively as Caribou, releasing The Milk Of Human Kindness in 2005, a fabulous suite of psychedelic pop.
With Andorra, released last month, he ramps up his burgeoning classic pop sensibilities even further. 'With this album I've focused on squeezing everything into a pop song and not leaving any loose ends lying around at the end' he explains from his home in London. 'I think it's the most cohesive record I've ever made.' Is it ever. Andorra remoulds the 1960s pop perfection of The Beach Boys, The Mamas & The Papas and The Zombies into beautiful, soaring new forms, with nary a superfluous note.
'Of course I'm a fan of baroque 1960s pop like The Zombies, but I would never want to make something that was just a simple homage to a particular period or type of music,' he says. There's little danger of anyone construing Andorra that way. With its bucolic, Boards of Canada-style synth flutterings and remarkably distinctive percussion work, Andorra is crammed with reminders that Snaith is no mere pastiche artist.
The most compelling moment of all arrives, however, with final track Niobe, a nine-minute staccato opus that suddenly adorns a generally retro-inspired album with a giddily futuristic denouement. 'Niobe is where the 1960s pop aesthetic really veers off into something totally different,' Snaith says. 'That track is really influenced by the work of [electronica producer] James Holden, and the way his music constantly builds and simulataneously falls apart.' From The Beach Boys to James Holden - it could only be the complex world of Caribou.
Kit Macdonald
Sun, The Arches, 253 Argyle Street, Glasgow, 8pm
Saturday 8 September 2007
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