Dan Snaith has shared his first new material under his Caribou alias in five years, a spry and soulful strut entitled Home.
In the five years since Caribou’s previous release, 2014’s tropical house-inspired Our Love album, the Canadian electronic dream-pop maestro Dan Snaith has been busy putting out dancefloor-orientated material under the guise of Daphni, most recently in June with the Sizzling EP. Now Snaith has signalled the long-awaited next chapter in his Caribou discography with a brand-new release on the Merge label, Home.
Already a firm favourite with radio tastemakers such as Gilles Peterson and Annie Mac, the wide-eyed and affirmative track swivels around a choice sample from Gloria Barnes’ 1971 sweet soul classic of the same name. Snaith’s artistic trajectory to date has been an intriguing one, encompassing astral jazz freak-outs, chiming psychedelia, chugging krautrock, pastoral IDM, ambient pop and pulsating house. Home is both wistful and lighters-aloft effusive, an Avalanches or J Dilla-inspired chopped-up breakbeat stroll diced with rippling harp, sickly strings, woozy horns, Barnes’s looped vocal and Smith’s own open-hearted whisper radiating a warm intimacy: “It’s just what she pleases/Cause she’s happy on her own/She picks up all the pieces, she’s going home.”
Caribou’s beat tape gem is a real treat that acts as a tantalising calling-card for this slithery practitioner’s next album-based move.
Score: 4/5
By Michael Sumsion
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