Bleep

After releasing the Our Love LP in 2014, Dan Snaith largely shelved his Caribou project and spent the rest of the 2010s concentrating on his output as Daphni. Suddenly, the new Caribou LP, finds Snaith returning to the name under which he first found fame.

Since starting up the more dancefloor-orientated Daphni, Snaith has increasingly used Caribou releases as spaces in which to try out new styles and go deeper on his songcraft. This trend continues on Suddenly, arguably Snaith’s most sonically adventurous and stylistically varied album. Snaith has often been likened to Arthur Russell, but rarely have such comparisons felt more apt than on Suddenly’s opening track ‘Sister’, a spare number in which he coos softly atop aquatic synth sounds. This vibe is maintained on the following number ‘You And I’, its lilting drums and keys invoking Russell’s Calling Out Of Context.

Another point of comparison across Suddenly is Gold Panda’s sampledelic beat tracks. This style can be detected at work on ‘Sunny’s Time’ - surely the first Caribou number that nods to trap - as well as ‘Home’, ‘Lime’ and Suddenly’s eponymous tune. It’s there in ‘Like I Loved You’ too, though the song’s spooling-thread guitar runs and ethereal vocals also have a fair bit of Jai Paul about them. With Snaith clearly stretching his artistic legs across the course of the album you might not expect him to find time to create organic house numbers in the ‘Sun’/‘Can’t Do Without You’ vein. However, he does deliver a couple of these in the album’s second half, with ‘Never Come Back’ and ‘Ravi’ both shuffling dancefloor delights.

Suddenly … there was a new Caribou album! The project’s first LP in six years is full of vigour, with Dan Snaith incorporating a wide array of genres into his typically tender writing style here.