Okay, so you remember that RJD2 album that came out a few months ago? Of course you do. Did you like it? If you answered “no,” well, you suck… But I also have a suggestion for you… Go listen to Adorra, the new album from Canadian musician Daniel V. Snaith, otherwise known as Caribou (or Manitoba if you’ve been following his career for a while). When I first heard of Snaith (upon the release of his “If Assholes Could Fly This Place Would Be An Airport” 12”) the music he was making was unequivocally “electronic.” But after the release of 2003’s Up In Flames he’s taken his sound in an ever-more-organic direction that could be labeled “Indietronica” or maybe “Folktronica,” and (due to a lawsuit) changed his stage-name to Caribou.
With Adorra (named after a tiny European principality which inspired the character-sketches the album’s songs are built upon) the “tronica” suffix becomes, on the one hand, totally insufficient to describe the music Snaith is making, and on the other, more applicable a description of the sonic quality of his music than it has been in a long time. It all depends on which songs you listen to. Drawing on the traditions of the Pure-Pop (that Brill Building/Wall of Sound vibe is in full effect), Psyche, Folk, and British-invasion acts of the sixties, tracks like “Melody Day,” “Sandy,” “Eli,” “After Hours,” and half of “Desiree,” wouldn’t sound out of place on “oldies” radio or some random album with shaggy-haired, be-ruffled British guys on the cover from the bins at the local thrift-store. But tracks like “She’s the One” (featuring Jeremy Greenspan of Junior Boys), “Irene” and “Niobe” have more of a synthetic, electronic sound, with drum-programming, and synthesizer tones betraying their modernity, even if the songwriting still has one foot in the past.
Getting back to the whole RJD2 thing though, I can’t help but compare Adorra to The Third Hand because fundamentally I think Snaith and RJ, who both made names for themselves in the realm of digital music production before opting for a more organic approach, both set out to make the same sort of album. They both wanted to play instruments (Snaith played, recorded, and produced everything on Andorra himself) and sing, and make what is essentially Pop music… The music that people our age grew up listening to on oldies radio… That many of us became collectors of as we got older… And in some cases, that we used as the building blocks for our own musical creations. And I think Snaith succeeded (I think RJ succeeded as well, but I know some people didn’t) in doing so on all fronts. Like I said earlier, a lot of the songs on Adorra sound straight off AM radio, but I’m forced to imagine that they also sound a lot like the records RJ and Shadow built their careers sampling as well.
A tour, featuring Snaith backed by a full band, is scheduled for the Fall.
-El Keter