RECORD RE VIE WS
CARIBOU
DEAD COSMONAUTS
Suddenly
We Sent Fragile Creatures To The Heavens But Not All of Them Perished
‘Going soft’ is a charge that most musicians would despise being levelled with. Not Canadian artist Dan Snaith however, who seems to have embraced it on Suddenly, his fifth album released under the name Caribou. This new collection of tracks thematically follows his last record, Our Love, by focusing on the universally accessible subjects of family and romance through a series of relatable vignettes. Snaith, who has also variously recorded as Manitoba and Daphni, openly acknowledged that 2014’s Our Love represented a tonal shift towards more sentimental, reflective work brought about by the birth of his daughter. It’s arguably even more palpable in his use of nostalgic riffs and emotive lyrics here. Caribou’s passion for his craft - he once created some 700 songs for a previous album before having to whittle them down to nine - is evident in his delicate selection of samples. Released as a single in December, ‘Home’ is one of the standouts here and features a gorgeous sped-up sample of an obscure 1970s Gloria Barnes song of the same name. The earworm ‘Never Come Back’ recalls the kind of lowkey bangers like ‘Odessa’ for which Snaith made his name over a decade ago. Occasionally the repetitiveness of the samples can grate, as on ‘Sunny’s Time’ and ‘New Jade’, but the more minimalist tracks where the samples are allowed to breathe, such as ‘Magpie’ and ‘Lime’, are strong highlights.
We Sent Fragile Creatures To The Heavens But Not All of Them Perished is the debut EP from Sheffield’s own Dead Cosmonauts, an instrumental post-metal record that captures the wonders of space travel with a vivid hue of retro-futurism. At under 30 minutes in length - time taken to read and process the considerable track titles notwithstanding - We Sent Fragile Creatures is brief by post-metal standards but exists beyond the apparent constrictions of time. For each minute that passes, a lifespan in transcendence is experienced. An auditory TARDIS, if you will. ‘Is It Not Worthy of Tears...’ in particular is a stunning journey of progression worthy of any voyage into the outer worlds, while ‘I Looked and I Looked...’ crescendos with psychedelic ferocity. For fans of genre heavyweights Russian Circles and ISIS, there’ll be a sense of familiarity to the seismic riffs and alluring ambience. But Cosmonauts bring a refreshing progression to the genre, blending psychedelic prog with an intriguing astrophysical concept. The vintage guitar tones and raw performance style hark back to seminal space rockers Hawkwind. The sum of these parts is a record that’ll appeal to both the prog rock old guard and the modern metal avant garde, with plenty of non-partisan listeners in between. As debut releases go, this effort ranks high in potential and establishes Dead Cosmonauts as a band to watch. With such a lucid cornucopia of sounds at their disposal, the future of space is theirs for the taking.
Dan Rawley
Nick Gosling
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