Swim

My computer has been "in the shop" for most of this week. I won't bore you with the details, suffice it to say that what was once a slow and dying relic is now a fine piece of finished finery.

UPGRADES!

Even if I'd had the old relic in hand, this week would have been just as uneventful. The only sounds coming from my speakers for the last 4 days have been those of The National's May 11th release High Violet. I can't post any of that here yet, at least not legally, but you can stream the album in its entirety by clicking right here. This might be the album of the year, folks. At the very least, it's everything I wanted it to be, which doesn't happen very often.

I did manage to pull myself away from Matt Berninger's dulcid tones today long enough to check out Caribou's newest release Swim.

Here's the thing. I don't normally care for dance/electro/house music. I grew up on a steady diet of guitar rock. I don't stray easily from that formula. Radiohead's Kid A was probably my first major departure, but even that only had one true "dance" track on it, and who doesn't like "Idioteque?" Caribou's last record Andorra was a brilliant tribute to the psychedelic pop/rock of the 1960's, so you can imagine my surprise when I turned on the first track of Swim and heard "Odessa" for the first time. It's straight up house music.

And even more surprising is that I liked it. A lot. Caribou just has a way of pulling you into his songs regardless of the genre. And although each Caribou record to date has been focused around a different genre, the identity of the artist has never once been lost in the mix, so that you're not listening to a psych pop record or a 70's rock record or a dance/house record, but a Caribou record. I really don't know of any other way to put it.

So, for your listening pleasure, here's "Odessa," the first track from Caribou's new album Swim. Enjoy.

Odessa - Caribou