Last spring, amid an endless series of lockdowns and widespread misery, Dan Snaith clung to a ray of hope on the horizon.
“As a former math kid (Snaith has a doctorate in math), from the beginning I thought: the only thing that is going to get us out of this is science,” he told the Star. “And suddenly there is the amazing feat of changing a lots of super effective vaccines in less than a year. It’s crazy and very inspiring for me. “
Hiding in his basement study, Snaith, better known by the nickname Caribou, began writing new music that he claimed was “literally made by the avalanche of vaccines that began to appear.”
“Every day, it was like: ‘My sister got vaccinated! My parents are vaccinated! Someone else got vaccinated! … Is coming!'”
The first taste of that inspiration is “You Can Do It,” an almost absurdly lush Caribou track that arrived in the summer, just as parts of the world were beginning to emerge from the stupor of a devastating third wave. Built around a rapidly sequenced vocal sample, a simple chord progression, and a house beat, the second half of the track blooms in an exciting crescendo of cheeky optimism.
The accompanying music video, inspired by the 1986 Disney movie “Navigator’s Flight, ”It features dozens of adorable dogs chasing Frisbees in slow motion, an image that manages to enhance the song’s dizzying buoyancy.
Snaith decided to release “You Can Do It” as a standalone single, something he had rarely done in the past. “I thought, is This is when it will resonate with people. There is nothing wrong with being blatantly positive and excited about this moment. “
Over the course of two decades, Snaith, a native of Dundas, Ontario, has built an extensive catalog of music that spans and blends multiple genres and styles.
His first work, originally released under the name Manitoba In the early 2000s, it took the form of sophisticated electronics and downtempo, a genre pioneered by artists like Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada and sometimes referred to as “smart dance music” or IDM. Manitoba’s debut album, “Start Breaking My Heart,” which Snaith recorded while studying at the University of Toronto, was met with widespread critical acclaim. (In 2017, Pitchfork named him one of the 50 greatest IDM albums of all time.)
In 2003, Snaith moved to the UK to pursue his PhD in mathematics at Imperial College London (his thesis was titled ‘Modular Overconverging Siegel Symbols”). A renewed interest in 1960s rock records and a search for drummers inspired him to incorporate vocals and live instrumentation into his music, culminating in the gleaming neo-psychedelia of the 2008 Polaris Award-winning album from Caribou. “Andorra. ”
Throughout the 2010s, Snaith’s music continued to evolve, incorporating elements of deep house, R&B, pop, and hip-hop into 2010’s “Swim” and 2014’s “Our Love,” which was nominated for a Grammy for best dance / electronic album. Over the past decade, he has also released three flawless, club-ready dance music studio albums under the alias DJ. Daphni.
What seems to unite this extensive body of music is Snaith’s constant sense of optimism, ever present, whether expressed in the form of joyous catharsis or subtle hope.
“That’s what I am,” Snaith explained of Zoom ahead of Caribou’s long overdue North American tour, which will begin this week with three shows at Danforth Music Hall.
“I’m someone who tries to put a positive spin on things and takes care of difficult things by turning them into something positive.”
In fact, hope permeates Caribou’s most recent LP, “Suddenly,” which came out in late February 2020. The album is Snaith’s most personal project yet, with songs about longing, loss, and pain. , each one expertly wrapped in brilliantly colored melodies. handmade dance rhythms. Upon “You and I”He sings about a death in his family. Upon “Home”Tells the story of a friend who found the courage to leave a toxic relationship.
“I mean, it’s in the title,” Snaith said. “It is about sudden and unexpected changes in your life and learning to adapt to them.”
And while on previous albums, Snaith used his voice sparingly, he often takes the lead on “Suddenly.”
In a five-star review of the album at The Guardian, Critic Alexis Petridis described Snaith’s voice as “brittle, uneducated and unprepossessing, the diametrical opposite of the kind of melodramatic fireworks display generally considered to constitute Good Singing in 2020, but remarkably shocking.”
“You don’t realize how used your ears have become to self-tuning perfection until you hear someone who actually sounds like a human being rather than a cyborg programmed to perform vocal calisthenics – it hits you emotionally in a way that melismatic feats of strength and endurance just don’t. “
A few days after the album was released, the pandemic was declared. In the chaotic and terrifying weeks that followed, Snaith thought that no one would really listen to “Suddenly.” Instead, the pandemic created the unique conditions for its fans to engage with music in a deeper and more meaningful way.
“Suddenly everyone was in the position of trying to figure out how to do something constructive or just deal with the sudden cataclysmic rate of change,” he said. “I received many excellent comments. People were directly texting me saying, ‘I’ve been locked up here or there and listening.’ This music has really helped me, ‘which is not at all what I expected’.
“I felt like the music had a real purpose.”
Sitting in his small studio in the basement of his London home some 20 months later, Snaith sounds excited to finally hit the road with his band (Caribou has performed live with the same band since they formed in 2003). They performed various shows and festivals during the summer, which Snaith described as “magical”.
“Everyone in the crowd just had a big smile on their face.”
Snaith says the last few years have been challenging, full of ups and downs. Filled with his wife and two young daughters, he found homeschooling a difficult but ultimately rewarding experience: “I would have been away during those years of my children’s lives,” he said.
But Snaith also had to take care of his father, who was terminally ill, a situation complicated by the uncertainty of the pandemic.
“Every time a decision was made about whether to go to the hospital and have something checked or if I could go visit him, the situation made all of those things difficult. I had to learn to adapt … I’m sure everyone has their own version of that story. But yeah, it feels like forever. “
Despite not releasing much original music, Snaith kept busy with other projects. Last winter, he released “Remixes suddenly, ”A collection of reinvented Caribou tracks, some recorded by his friends – Four Tet, Floating Points, Morgan Geist – and others recorded by artists who thrilled him in the early stages of the pandemic – Logic1000, India Jordan, Prince Nifty.
In the fall, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of his debut album, Snaith reissued a trio of his early albums: “Start Breaking My Heart”, “Up in Flames” from 2003 and “The Milk of Human Kindness” from 2005.
Listening to his older records now, one can’t help but marvel at how much Snaith’s sound has evolved. And yet surprisingly, regardless of genre, each song bears its unique signature: Snaith’s intricate drum patterns, delicately expressed falsetto, and the way the sounds are carefully layered and stacked on top of one another, like a Jenga tower threatening to collapse.
“I think it just comes through the process of making, you know? I’ve spent endless, endless, endless hours of my life making music and it just comes up: the sense of melody or the sense of harmony or the sense of rhythm, ”he explains.
“On some level, I am always trying to change. And then, on another level, what I’ve realized is that I can’t change even if I wanted to, and it’s the most likely that it will make my music unique. “
Two years have passed since Snaith set foot on Canadian soil. And although he is surrounded by his immediate family in the UK, many of his closest friends are here. “Canada is still your home in a kind of deep inner sense,” he says. “The landscape and the people and everything.”
As for Toronto, it’s the only place where he gets nervous before a show, “which tells you a lot.”
When asked what fans heading to the Danforth would expect this week, Snaith says that most of the show is “just one big dance party.”
“People don’t want to go out and see introspective music right now… People want to come and have a good time. I want people to have a good time. “
“That is our job.”
Reference-www.thestar.com