Caribou - Suddenly

Calculation is not a characteristic that has ever appealed to me much in the records I choose to listen to. Thinking things through of course is something else entirely, and the least you'd expect from an artist as the most basic courtesy to their listeners. However, trying to second guess your audience is another matter, particularly as you find yourself getting bigger, by accident or design, and runs the risk of making the resultant product sounding utterly lacking in terms of qualities that resonate within the human heart.

Such calculation has seemed to be at work to me listening through to two highly anticipated releases of recent weeks. First Tame Impala's The Slow Rush which I intended to write about here but have lacked the real urge to do so following my initial listens through to it  and now Caribou's Suddenly, which came out last Friday.

Both Tame Impala and Caribou have a definite patina of hipster cool and much credit in the bank following the genuinely innovative and groundbreaking records they've put out previously. They've both made fantastic records but I'd argue that the ones they've put out in 2020 don't really qualify for that status regardless of how much critical acclaim they are subject to this year.

Suddenly is a particularly annoying record. It sounds like the kind of thing which will attract plenty of radio and club play but I found it cluttered and utterly lacking in clarity. Its start stop jerky rhythms and treated vocals made me think I was trapped in the most soulless of corporate nightclubs with an utterly vacuous set of people. Beautiful perhaps but no-one around who you wanted to start up a conversation with or get to know better and nothing being played over the sound system that you were remotely tempted to fall in love with.

Dan Snaith, the man behind Caribou, clearly has the best intentions as well as the most immaculate taste in music. But I think he's taken a serious misstep here and lost his way somewhat. Suddenly has its moments but for me they were too few and far between. For the most part this sounded like a retread of Moby's Play for the coming decade and though it might sound like one, this was not intended as a compliment. Listen to The Orielles Disco Volador instead I'd say. There's a lot more fun being had and sometimes that's for more enjoyable to my ears than clinical state of the art studio polish.