RECOMMENDED
Dan Snaith began his musical career as Manitoba, before an unfortunate legal issue forced him to change his name to Caribou. But over time, there’s been a lot more changes at work than merely replacing a maligned moniker. Initially stamped along with friend and sometime collaborator Four Tet with the unfortunate “folktronica” tag, Snaith began building an impressive body of work, with early albums like “Up In Flames” and “Start Breaking My Heart” showcasing his ability to find both beauty in subtle rhythms and childlike innocence (“Crayon”) and energy in wiggy freakouts (“Lemon Yoghurt”). While these extremes were all tempered within the context of their respective albums, as a remixer Snaith was sonically emancipated to retread the widely varying work of others: adding barely perceptible touches to the twangy slide guitar of Mojave 3’s “Bluebird of Happiness,” juxtapositioning skittish caffeinated beats and near-trademarked chimey serenity to Junior Boys’ “Birthday,” and, my personal favorite, a completely unhinged noise-to-rolling breakbeat treatment of Seelenluft’s anthemic 2003 breakout “Manila.” This year saw the release of Caribou’s “Swim,” an epic leap in evolution that showed Snaith’s succesful move to more dance-floor-friendly material. And while his last album “Andorra” began showing Caribou’s shift from instrumentals to tracks with vox, like the swirling, Brian Wilson-tapping “Melody Day,” “Swim” showcases Snaith’s vocal maturation which shines on standouts like the delicate falsetto tenderness of “Odessa”. But old school fans who loved the depth of his instrumental work needn’t worry, with tracks like the trance-inducing, prayer bowl-sampling “Bowls.” Electronic collages of sound built for the lawn and for the dance floor…sounds like a perfect night for (yet another) night out at Downtown Sound: New Music Mondays! (Duke Shin)
July 12 at Millennium Park’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Michigan and Randolph, 6:30pm, free.
Related Stories
Mountain Goats Monomania: A Band That’s Not a Band and the Podcast That Exalts It I’ve just finished listening to the first thirteen episodes of season one of “I Only Listen to the Mountain Goats,” each edition of which is devoted to one song of the 2002 album, “All Hail West Texas.”- The Incredible Expanding Band: A Preview of The Claudettes at 210 Live The Claudettes’ sound is hard to pin down; there’s a strong foundation of barrelhouse and stride piano jazz, but there’s plenty of boogie-woogie in there as well. And even on its first album, the band delivered its original music with a punk attitude.
- Once an “It” Band, Still an Influencer: The Strokes Get It Done During a Tight Lolla Set Julian Casablancas has an inimitable voice that has not so much aged well as not aged at all, and Hammond’s guitar work remains glorious. You don’t have to dance at a Strokes show but you do need to move: the band’s best tracks are fast, fierce and over before you know it, the abrupt ending being something of a Strokes…
- Oh, to Be a Violent Femme: The Outsider Origins of an Iconic Band It’s hard these days to convey the simple offense the Violent Femmes were to 1980s musical culture. Now that they’re heralded as a classic band, assimilated by long-tradition listeners into roots music, you could almost be forgiven for miscalculating the degree of radicalism that was in their stripped-down, punked-out sound.
- Band Slam: A Review of On The Off Chance’s “White Shoes, Black Water” These guys are just so freaking happy to be playing rock ’n’ roll.
- Diversity Initiative: A Preview of Jimmy Herring at Park West On his most recent solo release—last year's “Live in San Francisco”—Herring and his band reach dizzying heights that combine instrumental pyrotechnics with a song-based aesthetic that balances the best characteristics of jazz, fusion and jam-based music.
