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CARIBOU

Honey
(Merge Records)
Add date: 10.8.2024
Release date: 10.4.2024



Upon first listen, two things about Honey are immediately clear: First, it is an entirely
new kind of Caribou record. Second, in being an entirely new kind of Caribou record, it
is in keeping with Dan Snaith’s discography, each new album marked by radical
thematic and sonic shifts. Honey is not a departure from the Caribou we’ve known up to
this point but rather the product of a lifetime spent listening to and crafting immaculate
pop music.

After two intensely personal Caribou albums (Suddenly and the Grammy-nominated Our
Love), Snaith now pulls himself away a little in search of music that isn’t about any one
person and is relatable to everybody. It also brings Snaith’s two personas, Caribou and
Daphni, closer together than ever before. On Honey, Snaith fuses their strengths into a
record that grabs you and moves you like Daphni before it uplifts you like Caribou. Huge
dancefloor tracks twinkle and surprise in a way only Snaith’s productions can, with a
freshness that defines an artist who is too excited by music-making to ever truly settle
into any one sound.

In the words of Snaith himself:

One thing that hasn’t changed for me from the very beginning is a manic
curiosity of seeing what I can make out of sound. Not so much what someone can
make out of sound—a “professional” with a host of collaborators and resources
at their disposal—but me, in my little basement studio. There’s more equipment
in here than there used to be, but essentially it’s the same as ever: still chasing
that thrill of when something hits really hard and finding myself jumping up and
down or the hairs standing up on my arms in excitement. How lucky am I that
that’s never gone away? That the chance of making something new and exciting
is still as exhilarating as ever, and as much fun as ever? Starting the day with
nothing (and finishing most days with nothing good) but occasionally having
something that didn’t exist before stuck in my head by the end of the day. It still
seems like a kind of alchemy.

Several songs on Honey—“Broke My Heart,” “Come Find Me,” and “Do Without
You”—broke new ground for Snaith as he experimented with a new tool that fit his
ambition to make a record that’s less about him. He explains:

I think the word “alchemy” kind of captures something about this, actually.
Obviously, one of the big things that changed while making this album was the
ability to manipulate my voice using AI. I found it impossible to resist trying it,
and once I’d tried it, it was impossible to look away. I have such a limited vocal
range and style, but over the years, I’ve managed to find ways of making it work,
of making it feel at home in the music I make. But what about being able to
change it completely? What could that do? What possibilities are opened up by
that? Well, actually not changing it completely… I think the central thing that
drew me to using this technology on this album was that if I listened closely, I
could still hear myself in there when I tried on different voices using AI. It still
captures all the phrasing, the pitch imperfections, the delivery, the breath…even
when turning it into someone else’s voice. It sounds both very much not like me

but also like me. I tried these tracks out on my closest friends and asked, “Who
do you think is singing?” and they always guessed someone close to me (my
daughter, for example) or me with some kind of effect. Why? Because it is some
kind of alchemy—changing my voice into something that is both mine and not
mine.

The result is Honey, which is at once Caribou and not Caribou, Daphni and not Daphni,
Snaith and not Snaith—an album that transfixes the ear by embracing the qualities of
those personas while hurtling them into an exhilarating unknown.

Caribou fans have found surprise and delight in the unknown for more than two
decades now, meeting Snaith at minimalist and maximalist extremes, moved by
dancefloor heaters and cathartic anthems alike. Here, by placing himself at a thematic
remove from the songs, Dan Snaith finds himself at the center of yet another startling
musical universe, the kind of record that happens when an artist with a sound years
ahead of its time pushes further into the future than anyone could have anticipated.