Kirstiecat | Blog

Cabaret Metro
11/8/07

There are a few times in a year when I see a band and come away from it inspired and changed. The experience is transcendent and visceral and has taken me to another place. Such is the case of last Thursday’s Caribou set and even though I’ve seen well over a hundred different live sets of bands this year, Caribou’s was easily ahead of all of them. Though this is the fourth time I’ve seen this band, it was by far the best. Caribou has perfected an art form and learned how to hone in on their skills in terms of bringing the songs to a live audience in a way that at times is almost a psychedelic assault that makes you fall in love with music all over again. In addition, their most recent release, Andorra, is their best to date and ranks #2 in my top albums of this year (second only to PJ Harvey’s brilliant White Chalk.) It’s an album that highlights the utmost creativity of human existence and is one I’d surely bring to any desert island.

Canada’s Caribou performs as a four piece but is mainly the work of Daniel V. Snaith who has taken the band across the name change from originally Manitoba and put out four full length albums, two tour cds, and a remarkably creative video collection entitled Marino. On previous tours, Caribou performed with videos from this collection behind them, which I think enhanced their live performance. For this recent set, Caribou used psychedelic projection patterns to make the experience more visual, perhaps because they haven’t yet put out a second video collection for songs from Andorra. The colors and lights they chose really added to the melodic psychedelic sounds of the record in this case. The only weakness visually was the stage setup that placed two of the band members (bassist Andy Lloyd guitarist Ryan Smith) to the immediate back of Snaith and drummer Brad Weber. Clearly, the music of the set was placed at higher priority than seeing all of the band members, which is acceptable in that many of the songs are flawless and would be an excellent an example of why all the humans on this Earth should not at any point be obliterated.

Though Snaith has a PhD in Mathematics from the Imperial College London, Caribou is anything but Math rock. Steeped in a sense of the 60s but showing a certain sense of postmodern growth, Caribou’s only calculations are in formulating phenomenal pop songs. If one had the ability to take everything that is good about the world, finding each small and large creative nugget from all remote hiding places, it would sound like Caribou. I rarely use the term brilliant but I will use it to describe Snaith as well as Andorra. The flawlessness in the way these songs were composed and performed is undeniable. Highlights from Andorra during Thursday’s set include “Melody Day,” “She’s the One,” and “Sandy.” I should not downplay their previous release 2005’s The Milk of Human Kindness, a more electronic based and less psychedelic influenced work of beauty. Perhaps the best gem of this one, which came across beautifully live is “Hello Hammerheads,” which has an undeniable ethereal quality despite the fact that the video for it off of Marino features a drowning man being rescued by a giant seahorse.

Admittedly, their 45 minute long set seemed to go by too soon from a band who deserves to be headlining. Further tour dates haven’t been announced yet but hopefully the band will tour again or atleast come back to Chicago next spring with a headlining gig. Until then, satisfy yourself by picking up Andorra. I promise it will help remove some of the bleakness of this world.

View the complete photoset with Born Ruffians on flickr

If outside of Chicago, click to see remaining live shows for this tour:

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November

1. 15th: Audio, Brighton, United Kingdom
2. 16th: Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, United Kingdom
3. 17th: South Street, Reading, United Kingdom
4. 18th: Glee Club, Birmingham, United Kingdom
5. 19th: Crane Lane Theatre, Cork, Ireland
6. 20th: Whelans, Dublin, Ireland
7. 21st: Limelight, Belfast, United Kingdom
8. 22nd: Independent, Sunderland, United Kingdom
9. 23rd: Roadhouse, Manchester, United Kingdom
10. 24th: Brudenell Social Club, Leeds, United Kingdom

* w/ Efterklang

1. 25th: The Social, Nottingham, United Kingdom
2. 26th: Thekla, Bristol, United Kingdom
3. 27th: Dingwalls, London, United Kingdom

* w/ Dirty Projectors

1. 28th: La Fleche d’Or, Paris, France
2. 29th: Palace, Brussels, Belgium
3. 30th: Les Rotendes, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

w/JOMF

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December

1. 1st: Tivoli Oude Gracht, Utrecht, Netherlands
2. 2nd: Manufaktur, Schorndorf, Germany
3. 4th: Palace, St. Gallen, Switzerland
4. 5th: MUZ Club, Nurnberg, Germany
5. 6th: B72, Wien, Austria
6. 7th: Lido, Berlin, Germany
7. 8th: Ubel and Gefahrlich, Hamburg, Germany
8. 9th: Loppen, Copenhagen, Denmark
9. 10th: Debaser Malmo, Malmo, Sweden
10. 11th: Pusterviksbaren, Goteborg, Sweden
11. 12th: Ladmark, Bergen, Norway
12. 13th: Garage, Oslo, Norway
13. 14th: Debaser Slussen, Stockholm, Sweden
14. 15th: Pop Bar, Razz Club, Barcelona, Spain

This entry was posted on Monday, November 12th, 2007 at 7:53 pm and is filed under Canada, music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.