A musical chronicle of life’s sudden twists and turns
Dundas-raised musician, Caribou, kicks off tour for new album in Hamilton
As we get older, life tends to grow more complicated, less carefree. We are confronted with unexpected twists and turns, tragedies and near tragedies, situations we never imagined happening.
In many ways the new Caribou album “Suddenly” is a chronicle of the twists and turns that Dundasraised electronic composer Dan Snaith has encountered in recent years.
There was the unexpected death of his brother-in-law from a heart attack at the age of 50 and a health scare for his 75-year-old father. Both events made Snaith, 41, realize the importance of family and just how fleeting life can be.
The Juno Award-winning musician also witnessed the birth of his youngest daughter Liv in the back seat of a small car in London, England. It was a sudden unexpected moment for sure.
“That’s another ‘suddenly’ moment,” Snaith says in an interview from his home in London, England. “We got stuck in traffic on a busy London road, not realizing how fast things were going to happen. We don’t even have a car. We had hired a midwife who was coming to help us, driving among other things. By the time she arrived, she just took one look at my wife and said ‘we’ve got to go right now.’
For most of his life, Snaith admits to having a fairly easy time of it.
He was raised in a nice home near Copetown, his father a mathematics professor at McMaster University. Snaith went to Parkside high school in Dundas and played piano for the Hamilton All Star Jazz Band. He hung out in the local club scene, forming a 13-piece funk band called Cro-Nasal Sapiens.
Like his father, Snaith also studied mathematics, earning his master’s degree at the University of Toronto and a doctorate at Imperial College London in England.
But he opted for a career in music, starting with simple computer laptop compositions under the stage moniker “Manitoba” and switching to “Caribou” after being threatened with legal action by New York punk musician, Handsome Dick Manitoba.
Snaith’s dreamy pop-oriented songs quickly earned him an international reputation as a pioneering electronic music guru.
In 2008, Snaith won the prestigious Polaris Prize (Canadian album of the year) for his LP “Andorra.” That was followed in 2011 with a Juno Award for his album “Swim.” He toured the world as an opening act for English rock heavyweights Radiohead and, in 2015, his “Our Love” album was nominated for a Grammy.
“Suddenly” marks Snaith’s first Caribou album in five years and on Monday, March 16, he kicks off a North American tour in The Studio theatre of Hamilton Place. The show, like many on the tour, has been sold out for months. He’s also performing three nights — March 17, 18 and 19 — at Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall.
The tracks on “Suddenly” are the most personal Snaith has written to date. Musically, the tracks take unexpected twists and turns, reflecting the jolts his life has taken in recent years. Lyrically there’s a sentimentality expressed on songs like “You and I,” “Home” and “Never Come Back” that was largely absent from previous Caribou efforts.
“The things that shaped this period of my life were not the things that I anticipated or expected,” Snaith says. “There were a lot of moments when I answered the phone and the news on the other end was something that reshaped everything.
“That’s what the lyrics are very much about in all of the songs.”