Caribou & The Milk of Human Kindness

Caribou/Manitoba is supposed to be someone I fall in love after people have said that he is great and similar to artists such as Four Tet and Matmos for a while now, if you add to that fact that he says his biggest inspiration is My Bloody Valentine and that he's on one of my favourite record labels, Domino, then you can see how I had high expectations with him. I never even really liked Manitoba but some of his improvisations when performing live were very creative so I listened to him anyway, this new Caribou album is alright but still nothing special, so you are probably wondering why I did a blog on it at all.

Well, I was listening to it again today, giving it the respect of revisiting as so many of my peers think it's ne of the albums of the year, when I suddenly realised that two of the songs on the album are actually pretty good, and one of those two songs is more than pretty good, it's pretty fucking fantastic in fact.

I like the dumbed down feel of the beats and the way the drums keep the album moving at a pace you could just about dance to but easily sit back and have a smoke with as well, normally these albums seem to go one way or another, and these "folktronica" albums seem to be always leaning a long way toward the latter. He seems to have a song in "Pelican Narrows" which is the only one I can think of that goes both ways so well, granted it's quite a bit more aimed on the chilling out side of things but it's definitely got enough tempo and interesting time signatures to keep you interested through a dance. It's one of the songs of 2005 so far in my opinion, and this album sounds a whole lot better now I know what it's leading up to.

The other song that I thought stood out a bit was "Bees" which is one I think will be more interesting for the every day listener because it's a lot more like the rest of the music being put out by similar artists and doesn't feel like a lesser version of everything else I've heard like this album. It also lays alot more of the emphasis of the song with the guitar he uses and the traditional instrumentation, especially the inclusion of vocals, will make it an easier listen for most people.

Caribou - Bees
Caribou - Pelican Narrows