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Sound Advice: Swim by Caribou
Every Tuesday, Torontoist scours record store shelves in search of the city’s most notable new releases and brings you the best—or sometimes just the biggest—of what we’ve heard in Sound Advice.
You’d think walking away with the 2008 Polaris Prize for Andorra might’ve convinced Caribou’s sole proprietor, Dan Snaith, to take an “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach to songwriting. But if he did, we’d be hard-pressed finding an interesting angle to write about. Luckily, Swim is one of them sea change discs that make critics go “By Zeus! He keeps evolving—just like Bjork!” Ever puttylike, the Ontario-raised, England-dwelling electro maestro flips the script on us yet again with this release, trading in Andorra’s pass-out-in-the-sun-while-listening-to-the-Beach-Boys-stoned vibe for a propulsive dance disc better suited for some after-hours terrace party in Ibiza.
Opening track and lead single “Odessa” gives us a lay of the land with metallic polyrhythms, a liquidy bassline, Eastern-tinged samples, early-’90s house synths, and a sultry geek-disco swagger. It’s quite a departure from the ’60s flower power of Andorra’s first track, “Melody Day,” but the record’s not a full left turn—while Snaith has a knack for self-transformation (including his Zen-like acceptance of being forced to give up his “Manitoba” pseudonym in 2004), his staple elements remain intact here. Those falsettos are as soulfully timid as ever (yes, even more unassertive than Thom Yorke’s!) and each track is still layered with loops upon loops of weird, exotic shit; check out the sweeping harp accents that melt into a percussive clatter of djembes and rin gongs on “Bowls,” or the way Balearic synths, hushed pop vocals, fluttering woodwinds, and deranged saxophones (courtesy of a Torontonian free-jazz quartet Snaith met in England last year) all coalesce during the swirling crescendo of “Kaili.”
Yet underpinning all these baroque arrangements are slinky, derriere-shaking grooves. As such, this may be Snaith’s most accessible effort to date. Tunes like “Leave House” resemble super-catchy Hot Chip jams, instantly infectious upon the first listen but still containing intricate headphone depth for you audiophiles out there. Snaith has said his aim was to create “dance music that sounds like it’s made out of water” and Swim lives up to that claim; it seamlessly peaks and collapses, sloshing freely from right speaker to left speaker with arrangements that sound as loose and buoyant as they are dense and convoluted. These are Z103.5 tunes for intellectuals. Expect them to inspire a legion of bedroom producers, or, at the very least, allow indie kids to get their fist-pump on while still feeling more subversive than the cast of Jersey Shore. Either way, this is Polaris money well spent.