Animal instincts

Dan Snaith of Caribou marks his territory,
dives into dance music, steps into the studio
and remaps his live show with Swim

REINDEER GAMES: Dan Snaith

by JACK OATMON

“This sounds new and it’s territory I’m claiming for myself,” says Dan Snaith, the man behind Caribou. “I don’t know whether I’m deluding myself or not, but this album feels like a very bold statement. That’s a very exciting idea for me.”

And he’s right. Swim is distinctive, ambitious and experimental to an extent that might surprise fans of his Polaris-winning 2007 album Andorra. A few months ago, I would have had all sorts of fawning adjectives for Caribou’s work—charming, chipper and captivating, warmly produced, retro and nuanced. But I certainly wouldn’t have been saying things like wild, funky, visceral, dubby, gripping and hallucinogenic. Yet here we are, three years after the poppy Andorra, and Snaith’s latest is a different universe.

“I was frustrated that people heard Andorra and thought, ‘Oh, I understand this guy—he likes the ’60s and he’s nostalgic about that kind of music.’ That wasn’t really the point of it at all. I thought that this time, I should push myself to come up with an aesthetic, a sonic combination that really felt like my own.”

The story of the album started with this personal mission, and it led Snaith into his first sessions in a recording studio, brought him to take a more personal approach to his lyrics and spend more time experimenting in the club. He even got a touch of serendipity by playing the Flaming Lips-curated edition of the All Tomorrow’s Parties festival. But it wasn’t just a sonic signature that Snaith was seeking. He also wanted to expose his own sentiments in a way he hadn’t before.

“There are lyrics that are personal to me, which has never been the case before. The lyrics were always there just to mirror the emotional content of the melodies. ‘Odessa’ is a song that’s about something very personal. A divorce—fortunately, not my own. And titles also relate to me in a sort of abstract way. The places, for example. ‘Kaili’ is a place in Southwest China that I spent part of the last year in with my wife. ‘Lalibela’ is a place in Ethiopia we went to.”

Not by the numbers

Place names are a recurring device for Snaith. From 2000 until 2006, when the threat of a lawsuit by Dictators singer “Handsome Dick” Manitoba forced a change of moniker, Snaith operated as Manitoba. As Caribou, he released titles like Marino and of course Andorra.

His latest album title, though, refers to swimming lessons Snaith received as a gift from his wife, as his ability to swim was underdeveloped despite having grown up with a pool in the backyard. The pool isn’t the only aspect of Snaith’s upbringing that has emerged again as an adult. To hear his music and speak to him, he seems to be an artist through and though. But surprisingly, he also has a PhD in math. In fact, nearly his entire family consists of math geeks, to the extent that dinner table conversation growing up was all derivatives and equations.

“Unfortunately, yes, that is what ended up getting talked about. My dad was a math professor, and every bit as obsessive about math as I am about music. My grandfather was a math teacher and my mom had been a math teacher. Now my sister’s also a mathematician and her husband’s a mathematician. When we were kids, my dad would be telling us some interesting fact about prime numbers or something.”

Though Snaith says he’s not sure how the math works into his artistic side, he does acknowledge the creative side of math. “It doesn’t affect my music in the way people traditionally expect. The whole point of making music for me is to be emotional and intuitive. Being rational and inserting some formula into the music is extremely unappealing. But at a research level, mathematics becomes much more intuitive and creative and imaginative. Unfortunately, mathematics up through high school is just dry and boring.”

Field data

The London, Ontario-born musician, who now lives across the pond in the original London, set out to make his own style of dance music on Swim, so the dancefloor was the obvious place to test out his new sound.

“When I was working on these tracks, I was DJing a lot more than in the past. So if I finished a track, I could go play it in a club. People wouldn’t know it’s one of my tracks, so I got this very natural read on their immediate reaction, and it’s a very physical reaction.”

The desire to produce for the club also led the longtime bedroom producer to take his music into the studio. For much of the production, Snaith was helped out by his old friend Jeremy Greenspan of the Junior Boys. The result is a more expansive, crisp sound.

“It feels like my most audiophile type of album,” explains Snaith. “Some of my music has been intentionally lo-fi or mushy-sounding in the past. But in the club, you want clarity and dynamics and spaciousness. It’s still all recorded at home in my bedroom, but it’s the first record where I went to a studio and mixed it properly. It’s had a huge effect on the way that it sounds.”

Horns of plenty

The sound itself is dizzying. Aside from an incredible sonic range, the album trots out music styles from dub and disco to folk, free jazz, house and beyond. The audio alchemy pairs up with Snaith’s lofty vocals to strongly evoke the experimental style of the late New York crossover icon Arthur Russell on parts of the record, notably “Leave House” and “Hannibal.”

“I’m a huge fan of Arthur Russell’s music. But the most interesting thing for me about him is that he’s a nexus of different kinds of music. It’s folk, disco, dub, avant-garde classical music, pop. He had such a wide sphere. That idea is really exciting about his music and a lot of dance music. There’s no fear of incorporating vastly diverse elements. Sure, you can make a disco record that’s 12 minutes long and has somebody screaming over the top, an out-of-tune trombone and a cello droning in the background. It’s fearless in a way.”

To that end, Snaith decided to include a lot of brass on the album. The addition of horns, which was something of a coincidence, lends a smooth, melancholy vibe.

“That was a real revelation, actually,” says Snaith. “We were asked by the Flaming Lips to play at their All Tomorrow’s Parties festival in New York and do something special. So we put together a 15-piece band. We got in touch with four improvisational horn players from Toronto. While rehearsing for those shows, I was thinking, I’ve gotta get these guys on the record. A couple days after the show, we got together and recorded all that stuff. I’m so happy that happened. It really takes the music to a different place.”

Though the Caribou live show has taken the form of a full band for the past several years, the slick production and careful arrangement on the record begs the question of how the sound can be handled on stage. “If this record had been made a few years ago, I really wouldn’t have had a clue how to play it live,” Snaith admits.

Fans who saw Caribou’s 2007 Pop Montreal performance will remember a somewhat standard band performance, which suited their music at that time. But the shape-shifting sound of Swim demands a much more tricked-out rig-up.

“All the electronic and traditional instruments are integrated in a much more flexible way. Hitting a key on a keyboard can trigger the effects on somebody’s voice or hitting a drum can change something in the video projections. Stepping on some pedal can fire off an effect on a synthesizer somebody else is playing. We can be very spontaneous when we’re playing these songs live.”

WITH TORO Y MOI AT LA TULIPE ON
WEDNESDAY, MAY 5, 8:30 P.M., $18