Caribou/ Swim

Caribou
Swim
(City Slang)

To state that Caribou’s latest LP is a work of considerable technical accomplishment is almost a back-handed compliment; it seems to allude to a lack of heart or of connection - like praising an actor for remembering their words or a footballer for looking quite nice in his kit.
But we can hand on heart profess that, when we compliment Dan Snaith on the almost academic prowess of his newest venture, it’s with the best of intentions. Swim may be a startlingly put together album, but it’s also bursting with passion and capable of sonically inducing just as much emotion as any meat and two veg love song.
The hypnotic myriad of sounds that run through the album’s nine tracks veer between dancefloor ready, more house-tinged ventures (the minimal trance- like rhythms of ‘Sun’ especially) to the underwater electro of ‘Hannibal’ that comes interspersed with, of all things, a horn section. The result falls somewhere along the lines of The Books mucking around with These New Puritans.
It’s ideas like this that set Caribou up as a genuine pioneer; the ability to truly flit between genres and end up at a point that’s almost unclassifiable in a good way is a commendable skill. So, though at times there’s a sense that Snaith could have shaved a minute or two off some tracks to a slightly more purposeful end, Swim’is an ingeniously thought out creation. And that’s high praise indeed.