Archive
CARIBOU
One of three limited-edition vinyl represses for one-man marvel
The Milk Of Human Kindness
(reissue, 2005)
LEAF
9/10
A mesmerising merger of electronic experimentation, pastoral psychedelia and unabashedly baroque pop, The Milk Of Human Kindness may be the point at which Dan Snaith’s idiosyncratic vision of past and future truly came into focus. That’s no knock against its two predecessors, 2001’s Start Breaking My Heart and 2003’s Up In Flames, which were initially released under the UKbased Canadian’s original monicker of Manitoba (changed owing to legal hassles with the Dictators’ Handsome Dick Manitoba) and now return in black-vinyl represses alongside his 2005 debut as Caribou. It’s just that the colours in Snaith’s kaleidoscopic third outing are a touch brighter. The heady likes of “A Final Warning” and “Bees” also mark a shift away from folktronica and shoegaze trappings toward new reference points such as the loopiest inhabitants of the Canterbury Scene and American minimalist composers like Steve Reich and Morton Subotnick. All three albums chart paths he’d continue to explore right up to the present.