Caribou is Dan Snaith, the artist formerly known as Manitoba. The abrupt name-change - from the flattest province of his native Canada to its most widely-distributed ungulate - is not for reasons of artistic whimsy, but because some old punk (Handsome Dick Manitoba of The Dictators, if you must know) threatened to sue him, even though he hadn’t recorded under the name for years.
Not that this coup-de-nom has had any kind of affect on Snaith’s musical trajectory. Most of those who enthused at the haunting, pastoral and precise IDM on his debut “Start Breaking My Heart”, were shocked at his sophomore effort (2002’s “Up In Flames”), which melded slow-burning bucolica with dense psychedelia, 60s pop-rock and thrashing live instrumentation.
“The Milk Of Human Kindness”, Snaith’s third long-player, is equally variable. The lack of fear that made it’s predecessor such an enjoyable experience is on display again as he takes us on another underground pop joyride through everything from baroque hip hop, tumultuous tattoos, Farfisa organs and velveteen vocals.
The bulk of the album is made up of several key tracks: “Final Warning”, “Hello Hammerheads”, “Brahminy Kite”, “Barnowl” and “Yeti” among them. By subverting traditional ‘verse-bridge-chorus’ formulas, these songs appear idiosyncratic - built by a capricious architect addicted to odd angles and obscure views. Yet Snaith also imbues them with such multi-layered, Brian Wilson-inspired warmth that they sound almost immediately familiar and soothing.
As we get all limp and nostalgic over his new experiments with old pop, Snaith shows us his other side via weird vignettes and dapper collages that link the songs together. In fact, “link” is the wrong word since rather than making a more mellifluous document these vacillating vignettes - the dark beats of “Lord Leopard”, the bombastic thrashing of “Hands First”, the gently crackling strings of “Drumheller” – are deliberately contrastive.
For it’s through this dialectic of tension and counter-tension that Snaith creates the necessary drama to make his music as powerful as it is. And with this majestic and multifarious new album, he has surely struck sonic gold once again.
by Paul Sullivan