Caribou / Manitoba (Dan Snaith) - Classic or Dud?

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sometimes classic sometimes dud.
a bit overrated imo

"Andorra" is a real grower...like it a lot

Dunno if I can say "classic" yet, but definitely not a dud. Though he is improving with every album he puts out, which is a rare and wonderful trait.

any good live? wondering whether i should go see him play tmr night.

Amazing live ... much better than on record. A lot noisier, two drummers = live madness, etc.

Only "Milk of Human Kindness" is a classic, his other albums are too patchy. "Andorra" was too maximalist for me, but "Milk of Human Kindness" had more of a focus on rhythm, with some very Can-esque moments to balance things out rather than bells-ringing psych-pop from start to finish.

See, I'm of the mind that Up in Flames is his only front-to-back classic. Still one of my favorite records of the '00s. Milk of Human Kindness never really clicked with me, though I've given it plenty of time to sit. Andorra is fantastic as well, though slightly less so than Flames.

classsssic
theres plenty to love on andorra and human kindness but yea up in flames is best. i always forget what start breaking my heart sounds like.

I find UIF a little too ADHD for me these days; I like the space, calmness and lower-keyness of MOHK and Andorra more, I think.

Hearing Dirtroad for the first time though, fucking hell...

Start breaking my heart is a straight up classic. Sparse, fast and clever.

UIF is fairly patchy imho. MOHK a bit mawkish, as in it's not a clear progression on from UIF. Andorra is just fantastic. So dense and well thought out.

Roz, did you see him live? I've seen him a few times and he's great fun. Got to talk to him a bit after the last gig. Very friendly guy!

I still need to hear Andorra. I'm in the "Up In Flames = flawless" camp (no better album for lazy summer driving), but Milk of Human Kindness never really clicked with me.

I'm not mad about the 2007 Tour CD. I probably just need to give it another couple of goes.

I'd love to get my hands on real copies of both the tour CDs. Does anyone know where they can be bought online?

Posteverything.com? That's where I've found his stuff before.

(In return could you tell me where you found your drop leaf table that I saw in the record collection thread? I am having a doozy of a time tracking one down!)

I'll have a look at Posteverything.

Table = http://www.johnlewis.com/Home+and+Garden/Dining+Room/Dining+Room+Furniture/Tables/173/230176366/Product.aspx

Tesco and Argos online both do similar ones that are much cheaper (and feel it).

The 2005 one is deleted, and they don't have the 2007 one. Hmph. Have to set-up an ebay search.

You can have my signed one (including his usual sketch of manic Dan) for a million dollars. Bargain.

Cheers for tip about table. No John Lewis here but I'm sure they deliver.

They do indeed. The amount of John Lewis stuff in our house is unbelievable. (My girlfriend worked for their outsourced online ordering system for ages, so when we bought a house she was all like "we NEED this table and these placemats, I've sold loads of them".)

Happy days! I unfortunately seem to have missed the sales. Also broke from builders. Still, it'll all be a distant memory in a year or two. Hopefully. Must get a Bob :)

Exciting new album news! Pfork's take:

Monday, January 25
Caribou Reveals New Album
Hear the first track now Caribou Reveals New Album

2007's Andorra, the last album from Dan Snaith's ever-mutating psych-pop project Caribou, appeared on our year-end list and won Canada's Polaris Music Prize, so hopes are high for the follow-up. That follow-up will arrive April 20, when Merge (in North America) and City Slang (in the UK and Europe) releases his new album, Swim. The 4/20 release date feels oddly appropriate.

Snaith recorded the album in Wales and in Junior Boy Jeremy Greenspan's Hamilton, Ontario studio. Guest stars include a quartet of Toronto free-jazz horn players and Born Ruffians' Luke Lalonde, who sings closer "Jamelia". At this site, anyone who gives an email address can download opener "Odessa".

In a statement, Snaith described the album's sound thusly: "I got excited by the idea of making dance music that's liquid in the way it flows back and forth, the sounds slosh around in pitch, timbre, pan... Dance music that sounds like it's made out of water, rather than made out of metallic stuff like most dance music does."

Swim:

01 Odessa
02 Sun
03 Kaili
04 Found Out
05 Bowls
06 Leave House
07 Hannibal
08 Lalibela
09 Jamelia

EXCITING

Between this, Four Tet and Spoon, I'm really looking forward to the first 3-4 months of 2010.

Stop being me.

Liking Odessa.

glad for this thread, 'cause i always get caribou/manitoba and four tet confused. two new threads for two new discs will help keep it all straight in my head.

http://cdn.pitchfork.com/media/Caribou_Swim_cover_art_hi-res.jpg

one of my fav dudes in the game 2day

anyone know of any Four Tet and Manitoba/Caribou collaborations? i have one remix they did together of the Notwist song "This Room" that is ridiculously good.

There used to be a Manitoba remix of Hilarious Movie Of The 90s floating around.

xp the Four Tet remix of Melody Day is beautiful

Odessa sounds quite good. The late April release date has me pretty excited too. I'm could definitely go for some early springtime cruisin' to the new Caribou!

vocal sounds very erlend oye

Four Tet mix of Melody Day seconded, it really is something special:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKvZtD8V6Kc

So I went back and listened to Milk of Human Kindness after dismissing it long ago for not sounding more like Andorra. Everyone up thread who were championed this were totally right. I don't know that I'd say I'd prefer it over Andorra, or even Up in Flames (easily two of my favorite albums of the past 10 to 15 years) but this ranks right up there.

Dan Snaith is dream a boat I tell ya.

Just realised that Swim comes out just before I get married. Nice.

cover connection

http://img12.nnm.ru/2/9/7/e/a/297eaef79cca17feca1bae2e337c01b3_full.jpg

Odessa sounds quite good. The late April release date has me pretty excited too. I'm could definitely go for some early springtime cruisin' to the new Caribou!

― dynamicinterface, Monday, January 25, 2010 9:49 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

is that song streaming somewhere online?

Never mind streaming; download the damn thing here - http://www.caribou.fm/swim_download/

sweet thx nick

odessa is funky and kind of gangster

Dan did this grrrrreat mix for his Nightmare Before Christmas day, well worth checking out: http://www.atpfestival.com/assets/cariboumix/index.html

Jamie will you be at NBC?

yes indeed, might even be djing if there's a free slot somewhere

Bonza, see you there.

Has anyone been peeping Dan's dance edits on the Resista label under his "Daphni" alias? They've been pretty killer so far and i like that his love for African music translates into some very dancefloor friendly edits of songs by Balla et ses Balladins and the like. and then the track he just dropped on Jiaolong, which uses an Analog Africa track for some heavier techno business, is easily one of my favorites for the year.

This Daphni remix of an old Malian disco track is all percussivey and great:
http://soundcloud.com/sofrito/niama-makalou-et-african-soul

Need to check that out. I see that they are doing some dates as Radiohead's opening act, and previously remixed Radiohead.

So far I'm admiring it but not feeling it (unlike his last few under the Caribou moniker, which were all immediate stunners). The vocal sampling/looping feels a little heavy-handed.

Absolutely blown away by this one - I don't know if anything can ever top Swim for me, but when the dust settles this is a likely my #2 Snaith joint.

Our Love was the first one I felt less than in love with, and this has jumped him straight back in there.

Thought it was great on first listen in the house. Was a little cooler on it when I listened again in the car, earlier.

I loved Our Love... that grabbed me immediately though there were some arrangement decisions in some of the songs that I felt held them back.

This one I need to give another proper listen to, but first pass it was gorgeous, if not less "catchy" than Our Love and Swim.

I've only heard New Jade so far but I would pay for a version with all the vocals removed.

Getting strong DJ Koze vibes from 'Home'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7mZXWO9Bu4

best leap day essential mix ever?

https://sickmouthy.wordpress.com/2020/03/01/caribou-suddenly/

Liking this a lot more than expected on first listen

Oh man, I love this. Like the latest James Blake, I feel like I like it a lot more than I should, it doesn't really break new ground, but the mood is incredible.

He's never been a better producer than he is on this every album, every single element sounds so good... except his voice which I don't think I'm ever going to get past, it just anchors everything in the emotionally lukewarm zone for me.

Is there a general consensus that Swim is his best one? It's clearly Andorra and then The Milk... and then a big gap imo

up in flames is still my fav

i haven't been able to get into the new one, it's too song-y. seeing him live in a couple of weeks and maybe that'll get me into it

Scik Mouthy: so sad you’re going through that heartbreaking experience with your kid. Sincerely send you some love.

I love how this album sounds, makes up for the disappointment of the Grimes one.

more into this than the last one

i always thought the consensus was that andorra and swim were the best in whichever order

"magpie" is lovely, one of his best sounding tracks

Yeah, really into the minimalism and sound palette of this album. The two singles are probably my least favorite tracks tbh.

yeah "never come back" feels like an Obligatory Single here and not a standout

Thanks Moka - we're generally all pretty good at the moment but we've been through the mill for sure.

I have reservations about his voice, although it's normally not obstrusive enough to have any detrimental effect, and I wasn't expecting to be so into this from radio play of the singles (Never Come Back sounded exactly like a continuation of Our Love, and Home seemed too reliant on the sample, but they both work much better in context of the album for me) and early reports of how much he's singing on it, but it's actually working for me way more than his singing has before.

There are a few points where I kind of want it to go wild and tip into that collapse/chaos he's done before - the end of Magpie, for instance, teases me that it's going to explode and then it pulls back and finishes - and initially I was a bit gutted that he hadn't pushed it right out there, but I'm also impressed by the restraint.

Great seeing you write about music again, Scik Mouthy. I remember following your blog years ago and getting some amazing recommendations. And I'm glad the family's doing better!

“Our Love” didn't grab me much either, maybe apart from the singles, and Daphni was never really my thing, but I'm looking forward to picking up a copy of the new one today after work. I actually like his singing on his older tracks so the focus on vocals shouldn't be a problem.

this album is beautiful

i enjoy it a lot, as i do with all manitoba/caribou lps

our love lost me, used to love his mid aughts stuff. worth a revisit?

40000%

like i skip a couple of tracks on our love, but there are some stunners on it

this new one is more dance-oriented. "home" feels like something he coulda done mid-aughts, tho.

I think this one is good but nothing on it sizzles for me

"Suddenly" is the first record of his i liked in a long while. "Honey", the new one, might be even better. He's not singing as much on it... though I liked that.

Love this single:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMlxWZ3ta7U

ok apparently that's him singing though a plugin lol

No way lol.

Lots of bangers on the new record

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eKp2BO29ac

yeah, the line between Caribou and Daphni is getting blurrier. I think it's for the best.

Today's Pfork review saying that all of the vocals are him with AI effects, and insinuating that the reason he's not doing interviews around the release is because he doesn't want to make that a focus of how the record is heard.

Were this kind of effects really that much trickier to do before "AI"?

If I’m understanding it correctly these aren’t AI generated vocals, but AI masked vocals. So Dan is basically singing everything and then changing his voice with AI. So this isn’t radically different from say, using autotune but has more potential and will probably be a very popular tool for modifying vocals in the following years.

I don’t see anything controversial with its use but I see why most articles will use it as the main story so they can use the AI buzzword.

also what a bad review that one in Pitchfork...

the "minstrelsy" thing about the very short rap... ug

anyway fun record!!

Wow, it's been awhile since I've seen a negative review of anything! Knives out for Caribou.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2024/oct/03/caribou-honey-review-this-ai-aided-album-is-dubious-on-so-many-levels

Idk, the tracks sound pretty great to me. If Campfire is the rap track they're talking about it, the 'rap' part is like 8 bars long and does not sound particularly egregious to me?

Oof that review. Minus additional points for the stupid Buzzfeed style clickbait "and wait till you find out who's singing them" on the main page.

Yeah, that review was annoying enough that i had to google the author, and wasn't that surprised to read that he dabbles in cancel culture.
But apparently the guardian has the same issue with Campfire, so maybe Caribou is in trouble here.

so is this snaith's witch house album then

Its weird that the reviewer brings up previous moral panics over drum machines and sampling but still comes to the conclusion that this new technology has finally gone too far.

It was a very unbalanced piece of writing! I don't mean the prose was unbalanced, I mean the writer seemed to be all over the room.

Yeah, weird review.

Ethics/fears about the use of AI-aided vocal transformations aside, I simply miss Snaith’s vocals a lot here, and I think that the album suffers greatly for their absence.

I get why he wanted to experiment with a compelling new technology, and I think it would have made for a fascinating EP. But the contrast between the fragility/vulnerability of his voice and the virtuosic technicolor of his beats has always been the key axis upon which Caribou has balanced, and replacing them with a faceless female pop coo sort of tilts the overall picture into a zone I don’t love.

The record has a gimmick. It’s ok to criticize the music for being gimmicky. But this pearl clutching about an electronic artist using technology is bizarre. And wondering about the “implications” of the AI voice for the rap section is just obnoxious. To call that part rap is questionable to begin with, but also White rappers exist. It’s like if someone said “It was fine sampling Kraftwerk records, but when he sampled James Brown records it really started raising questions”

Like, the implications of the technology are clear and it's Pandora's Box, but let's save the vitriol for when someone is actually using it in a lazy and appropriative way.

The irony is that Snaith has always used sampled vocals to great effect— if he’d just released the album with no mention of AI, I doubt anyone would’ve batted eyes

for over 20 years i have favored "jacknuggeted" as my favorite caribou song but i think this is gunning for it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl-ThokXAvE

This smacks of people being turned down for interviews.

should have had Chet Hanks doing a patois on the track instead