Caribou

Caribou

Since 2000 · Canada

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Swim (2010)

Swim is the record where Dan Snaith pushed Caribou's sound toward the dancefloor without abandoning the melodic, slightly wistful songwriting that had defined his earlier work as Manitoba and early Caribou. "Odessa" opens the album on a squelchy, rubbery bassline and a vocal melody that stays plaintive even as the rhythm section insists on movement. "Sun" pushes the same tension further, a repeated vocal loop riding an increasingly heavy, physical groove. Snaith has said he built the record around the specific sound of vocals and instruments processed to feel like they were recorded underwater, and that idea holds the album together as much as any single track does.

Sleeve notes

Swim · 2010

Dan Snaith began recording as Manitoba in the early 2000s while completing a mathematics PhD in London, before a naming dispute with the American punk musician Richard "Handsome Dick" Manitoba forced a change to Caribou partway through his career. His early records mixed psychedelic pop songwriting with dense, sample-based production, warmer and more melodic than most of the electronic music he'd cited as an influence growing up.

Swim (2010) marked a deliberate turn toward club music, Snaith having said he wanted to make dance tracks that still sounded distinctly like songs rather than functional tools for DJs. Andorra (2007), the album released just before that shift, had already won Canada's Polaris Music Prize and expanded his audience considerably. Snaith has continued alternating between song-focused Caribou albums and more straightforwardly club-oriented material released under the alias Daphni, treating the two as related but distinct outlets for the same underlying interests. He has also worked as a remixer and occasional live collaborator for a range of other electronic musicians, keeping Caribou's audience connected to scenes well beyond the one he first emerged from.