Yoo-hoo, Caribou: pt 2

More from Dan Snaith's Hearts on Fire interview

The conclusion of the Caribou interview for Hearts on Fire, conducted in 2020 while Dan Snaith was promoting Suddenly and returning to the stage with a live band for the first time in six years.

Part one is here. This week’s live music listings are here. Caribou plays Massey Hall tonight and History tomorrow.

Dan Snaith has always struggled with his singing. He started out as an instrumental artist on his 2001 debut. When he added his own tentative vocals on 2003’s Up in Flames—a record that marked a remarkable sonic shift into psychedelia—he performed it with a live band but using canned vocals.

He’s much less shy now, which is why it’s a bit odd that the new album, Honey, has him using AI tools to alter his voice into a woman or a rapper. Easier, I suppose, than clearing samples, but the Luddite in me always wonders: why not just hire real live humans?

Caribou usually garners near-unanimous praise—Snaith is one of the few artists, electronic or otherwise, who get more popular and acclaimed as they get older—but Honey has had decidedly mixed reviews.

Exclaim! praised Honey as “a veritable buffet of bangers.” Pitchfork, whose reviewer did like the album, stuck with the culinary analogy and described it as an “adult’s kids menu,” akin to Four Tet suddenly palling around with Skrillex, or Floating Points returning to the dancefloor after interstellar explorations with Pharoah Sanders.

The Guardian, whose reviewer did not like the album, lamented that “rather like his friend Kieran Hebden (Four Tet), Snaith has had a pleasingly Benjamin Button-ish career, starting out with spirited yet bucolic psychedelia before getting ever more youthful and dancefloor-orientated.”

Judge for yourself, while noting that Snaith is leaning into his physical resemblance to Breaking Bad’s Walter White as he gets older:

The following interview doesn’t touch on Honey—because Snaith is taking a page from his close friend Kieran “Four Tet” Hebden and avoiding press altogether this year.

Instead, we talk about 2020’s Suddenly, as well as: Madlib, Neutral Milk Hotel, Junior Boys, Russian Futurists, Merge Records, winning the Polaris Prize in 2008, being covered by Sarah Harmer and Owen Pallett, clearing beyond-obscure samples, the evolution of his live band, why one of his songs makes me sonically nauseous, and leaving room for looseness in quantized music.

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Caribou

Jan 23 2020

Phone interview from his London home

You start the 2000s with Kieran Hebden helping you out with your first record deal (with UK’s Leaf), and you end the decade with Marshall Allan of the Sun Ra Arkestra in your band (the 16-piece Caribou Vibration Ensemble). Who else helped open doors for you?