Peter Holslin looks good in a mustache
It’s impossible to say who invented the four-to-the-floor beat. My guess is it dates back to a primordial age, when Homo neanderthalensis first realized they could bang rock to ground in an effort to convey the fire in their loins. Some 350,000 years later, plenty of dance music practitioners still rely on impact and repetition to achieve the same results. But you’ll also find highly evolved species like Dan Snaith of Caribou, whose new album Our Love uses some of those same techniques for more nuanced romantic purposes.
Like any producer attuned to the ways of the dance-floor, Snaith has an appreciation for a nice, sculpted bass drum. But even with its four-by-four groove, Our Love opener “Can’t Do Without You” is less about carnal urge than slow-building epiphany. Have you ever been in a relationship with someone you’ve been dating for a while, and you start getting weird thoughts and new anxieties, and then suddenly you realize, “Whoa, I am in love with this person”? The song captures this process perfectly, as Snaith slowly ramps up the intensity with filters and drums, letting the words “can’t do without…” run in an insistent loop before finally concluding the thought with a rapturous climax of colorful synths.
There are more immediate pleasures to be found on Our Love, but they’re tempered by ambiguous musical turns. Take the tracks “Julia Brightly” and “Mars,” for example. The first is as ecstatic as makeout-music gets—a dopamine-fueled jam of whimsical filter sweeps and brisk, syncopated beats. The second is more wary and anxious, its fluttering synth-flute melody juxtaposed against a gasping hi-hat and stuttering tom toms. Together these tracks mirror the ups and downs that come in so many relationships. There’s the rush of the honeymoon phase, of course, but invariably also the tension of a major setback, when you’re stuck in decision mode about whether to stay with this person or cut them loose.
Electronic producers’ tools have evolved radically over the years, and the computer has been a real enabler for bass-addicted EDM fiends. Snaith goes in the opposite direction on Our Love, wringing as much emotional shading as he can out of subdued elements. This works particularly well on the R&B-tinged ballad “Second Chance,” as his shimmering chord sequence brings out the aching anticipation of Jessy Lanza’s vocals. The title track is also quite effective, conjuring an image of an extra-special get together with its reverb-amplified whispers, bedframe-bumping drums and Owen Pallett-arranged strings. But if it’s a perfect metaphor if you’re after, you’ll find it in the squiggling synth running through “Your Love Will Set You Free”—in a song about wanting someone after leaving them, Snaith’s synth represents that last ribbon of desire still knotted inside the heart.
It makes sense why the 4/4 beat has kept going for so long. Dance music (and music, period) often revolves around seduction and penetration, anticipation and climax, and these are moments when the heart is thumping, eager to push forward. But there are subtler, harder-to-identify aspects of love too: wordless signals, instinctive actions, fleeting shifts in energy. Our Love is powerful because it captures all that magic going on between the beats.
