Caribou: "Odessa"

When Dan Snaith flipped the switch three years ago from funky, diced, largely instrumental music to purely vocal psychedelic pop, it was the right move at the right time: with help from his origins as Manitoba, he had a solid enough back catalog to instantly make Caribou a broadly defined band while affording a growing audience more accessible entry points; call “Melody Day” the most accessible of the accessible. “Odessa,” Caribou’s first new release since Andorra (2007), might not represent a similar kind of game-changer, but like the canvas-broadening moves made between his first three albums, it takes familiar elements—Snaith’s soulfully minute voice and the rich loops that dominated his last LP—and propels them somewhere he can fitfully reign: the dancefloor.

The breakbeats of Up In Flames (2003) and the IDM of Start Breaking My Heart (2001) always stayed resolutely in the background, as colorful as they could be, and even Snaith’s poppier past few albums have seemed haltingly intellectual. But like Four Tet’s own move towards the more immediately pleasing elements of dubstep and more straightforward electronica, “Odessa” locks in the tambourine-heavy beat over an infectious, watery bassline, with Snaith’s repetitious vocal reminiscent of Erland Øye’s soft-rock, disco-tinged whisper throughout his Whitest Boy Alive project.

The almost-too-quiet descending guitar riff that slips in under the comparatively ostentatious, panning samples between verse and chorus demonstrates that Snaith still possesses tricks to be revealed, perhaps exposed more explicitly throughout the upcoming Swim. But very little else is hidden here. The bass gets piano emphasis; the weird samples get fun variations; the tambourine gets a pulse-quickening tempo shift from some sort of cowbell; the Arthur Russell grooves that have been James Murphy’s bread and butter are given enough color and depth to survive headphone repetition, but retain a relieving translucence: this is the sound of an unfairly talented control freak no longer giving a shit. And it makes me want to shake my ass. As Mystikal would advise, I ought to watch myself.

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