CARIBOU - ANDORRA

read the article on amelia's here...

Brian Wilson danced gaily on the brink of insanity creating the dream-pop genre before slipping into the abyss and being rightfully branded a genius while there. Dan 'Caribou' Snaith's third record eschews the same sort of floating majesty that Wilson rolled out, chopped up and popped into his pipe.

Snaith completed a Maths PhD when on the road with the Super Furry Animals plugging his second album The Milk of Human Kindness. He traveled the world from the UK to North America and from Eastern Europe to China, soaking up eastern mysticism, Balkan bombast, American surf-pop and British sensibility as he went to produce this carefully constructed gaggle of tunes.

Andorra, the country that serves as the album's namesake, is a tiny state in the Pyrenees firmly lodged between France and Spain. The characters in the album were all dreamed up during Snaith's time there. Desiree, Niobe, Sandy, Eli, Irene, they are all running around Snaith's mind, crystal clear in his imagining, and poured fourth surrounded by carefully textured ambient songscapes.

Snaith is on a quest to cut the bullshit. He just loves lump in your throat pop songs, songs that draw the emotions to the fore, songs you can get lost. But we all love those songs, don't we? Any song that draws a bit of nostalgia up, conjures a wistful sigh - an image of a lover past, just sits nicely in the ear. For me it's Sundialing, but there's a sense that there could be a song here for everyone, a rare feat.

The music swims like Beaches & Canyons era Black Dice, with the mathematic precision of genre stalwarts Boards of Canada. Nothing is surplus to demand, but you just can't imagine how he decided it would work, it just does. The vocal is like the aforementioned Brian Wilson if he met The Beta Band and formed a barbershop quartet. Quite beautiful stuff.