Let’s be honest here: Dan Snaith is an odd-looking guy, even for an indie rock musician. He’s probably the last person I’d imagine to be behind Caribou’s glorious pop soundscapes. Having broken through with the Polaris Prize winning Andorra in 2007, Snaith is currently touring on Swim, released this past April, and was nice enough to chat with me over the phone earlier this week.
Smile Politely: How do you go about translating your studio material, which is recorded solo, to a live band?
Dan Snaith: The album’s very much a solitary thing, it’s just me at home, and then the live band is all four of us collaborating, putting together the show. We live all over the world, so before we started touring we discussed and sent files back and forth to set the tone. And then we met in a room and just tried different things out. I guess the important to me in the live show is that it doesn’t have to be the same thing as the record, so we kind of mess around and see what’s the most exciting way of playing the show.
SP: Last time you played in Champaign-Urbana [April 2008 at Courtyard Cafe] you were occasionally jumping on a second drum and doing these awesome two-drummer songs…
DS: Yeah, we’ve still got two drum kits up there.
SP: How do you balance the setlist with playing newer material while retaining older songs. Do you figure that out the night of a show?
DS: Yeah, definitely. We’re playing a lot of the new stuff and we’re excited to play that stuff and it’s the stuff that’s really evolved the most. We recently just had a few days off between festivals so we went back in and learned a bunch of songs, older songs, songs that we’ve never played before even. So we’re kind of deciding that tonight, which one’s we’re gonna play and mixing them in?
SP: How have you found that your recording process has changed album to album?
DS: Well, it’s similar in a lot of ways, it’s still this process of me alone working on music all the time. But this album was different in that of the tracks came about as part of going out to clubs and DJing more, working on tracks just to DJ, rather than thinking them as songs. So I tried them out and then changed them, tried them out the next weekend when I was DJing somewhere. So I kind of has this feedback which I don’t usually have, usually it’s like a year before anybody hears the music. Making music and trying it that night had this kind of sense of immediacy about it.
SP: So more of an organic feel, so to speak?
DS: It evolved more in a way that I was thinking about practically playing it in a club, how it would sound in a club, rather than just listening to it at home. So trying different environments with people dancing to it, and I’d see how they reacted.
Caribou perform Saturday night (9/25) at the Canopy Club. Tickets are $15 in advance and the show begins at 7:30 p.m.
Image via Wikipedia (Creative Commons Share alike)
