Album title:
Andorra
Artist:
Caribou
Label:
City Slang
Previous reviews have already dissected the shortcomings of the term "folktronica," but how else are we to pigeonhole the marring of gentle pastoral meanderings with laptop jiggery-pokery? Electro-acoustic just ain't going to cut it. Caribou's last albums, under the name Manitoba, were stunning pieces of gentle psychedelia, toured with a double drummer live band that cemented Dan Snaith's capability of seamlessly blending ersatz-harpsichord atmospheres with tumbling digitals. But Andorra eases up on the rampant experimentation to bring a soul stirring escapist field of soothing altered-pop - as if OOIOO were minstrels or if Brian Wilson went post-glitch. But to say it's not as experimental as previous albums is misleading, its experimentation is subtle with dense washes of sublime sound opening themselves up for exploration. So many acclaimed groups combining electronic and traditional elements tend to get bogged down in novelty, but Dan Snaith's songs show signs of truly harnessing this juxtaposition. [Ali Maloney]