A raging drum and bass track has just ripped through the crowd at The Roundhouse. The audience’s hands are in the air, grins are on their faces, and the crowd dissolves into rapturous applause for the man standing in the middle of the stage.
He’s an unlikely figure to find there – a middle-aged Canadian man, bald, wearing chinos and clear-lens aviator glasses. He walks to the edge of the crowd with only his socks on, no shoes, and thanks the audience with a beatific grin on his face. Then again, almost nothing Caribou does is what you might expect.
Dan Snaith has been making music under this moniker for over 20 years now, and in that time he has outlasted several of the scenes he was caught up in. His early work is rhythmic, textural and dreamy – not a million miles away from the first albums of his friend and contemporary, Four Tet. He’s made music under other names, too; his albums as Daphni are playful club tools, as happy on Radio 1 as they would be at 4AM in a warehouse.
Caribou’s current incarnation, centred around new album Honey, is joined together by a profound sense of joy, and of fun. The title track – the aforementioned D&B banger – is a case in point, with an almost giddy drop that feels like Snaith throwing the kitchen sink at a track, not being afraid to have some fun with it. That sense also flows through tonight’s set, from the big, bold visuals right down to the fact the band are just constantly smiling at one another.
It’s a point worth making too that although the Caribou albums are written and recorded solo by Snaith, he views the live side of things as a deeply collaborative incarnation of the project. He’s joined tonight by guitarist Ryan Smith, bassist John Schmersal and drummer Brad Weber, although everyone on stage wears many hats throughout the course of the set, constantly swapping instruments and moving as if they were arms of one organism.
The set is joyously diverse, taking in moments from throughout Caribou’s discography – indeed, opener ‘Volume’ seemingly features snippets of several other tracks, tell-tale musical flourishes that immediately establish we’re in Snaith’s world. This is something that rears its head again and again throughout the set, actually, the same sounds and textures resurfacing and echoing – it all feels part of the same, technicolour landscape.
Against that backdrop, though, there are tracks that garner an immediate reaction from the crowd: the boomeranging synths of 2010’s ‘Odessa’ are familiar anywhere, and the autotuned hook of ‘Never Come Back’ kicks proceedings straight into house territory – both are greeted with whoops of recognition. Indeed, the back half of the set is home to several clubbier cuts. Snaith and co. have great fun slamming into a sample of 00s rave classic ‘Hackney Parrot’, with a sequence that could feel just at home in an Overmono set, and from there on out, it definitely feels like we’re more into rave territory.
Singles from the latest album, ‘Broke My Heart’ and ‘Honey’, are both played in their extended versions and segue into incredible, bass-heavy remixes. Snaith has a keen sense here of how much bombast is the right amount – constantly soaring close to the limit, and then backing back down. It would be easy to be cynical (at what point does pastiche just become naff pop-house?), but his infectious enthusiasm throughout keeps the set moving at pace.
Indeed, the only shame here (particularly in the first half of the set) is how easy it is for Snaith’s vocals to get lost in such a busy mix. His softly-spoken alto sometimes feels like it’s fighting the layers and layers of percussion and synths, and occasionally the same could be said of the arrangements – attempts to replicate the beat drops of some of the tracks can fail to quite hit the same spot as the studio incarnations.
But this is nit-picking when you have a set that clearly induces such joy amongst the audience. As the final track ‘Can’t Do Without You’ comes into view, the house lights fade up on a sea of smiling faces. Snaith thanks the audience again, reminding them how long he and the band have been waiting to play these shows. Couples, friends, strangers all embrace as the hook rolls around and around: “I can’t do without you.” Here in this room watching Caribou, for 3,000 people that really does seem to be true.
images: Fabrice Bourgelle
