By Marina Foo
Daniel Snaith, the mastermind behind Caribou, has done more in the past six years than what most people will in their entire lives. Releasing his fourth studio album, Andorra, earlier this year, Caribou has trekked a fair distance. Along the journey, Snaith picked up a PhD in Mathematics from the University of London, watched some nature documentaries and took trampoline lessons.
“I haven’t done math since getting my PhD,” Snaith explains. “I did the PhD because I enjoyed it. Music and math, two things I always loved. If music hadn’t happened, I would have been a math professor now, I’m sure.”
Okay, the field of math is out a professor but where would the world be without the beautiful melodies from Caribou’s latest record? Andorra is a phenomenal album, filled to the brim with poppy tunes, strong melodies and interesting chord changes that Snaith enjoyed. This album was Caribou’s first to be released on Merge, a label that’s home to such artists as the Arcade Fire, Spoon, Neutral Milk Hotel and Magnetic Fields.
“When I was growing up I really loved Neutral Milk Hotel and Magnetic Fields,” Snaith admits. “The label is run by musicians and is strongly independent. It just seemed like a natural fit.”
While Andorra fits naturally on Merge, Caribou enjoys what nature itself has to offer. Snaith reveals his pleasures in watching those television nature documentaries such as BBC’s Planet Earth.
“Unfortunately I don’t get to get out into the natural world that often because I live in London but I do watch lots of nature shows,” Snaith explains. “I’m a big nature nerd. The one episode I didn’t see initially [from Planet Earth] actually is the deep sea creatures. It was such a bizarre environment to be living in. Even in other documentaries I haven’t seen anything remotely like that. It is so mesmerizing.”
Snaith loves the ocean so much that in his Tune Tribe interview he mentioned that if he was able to play anywhere in the world he would play at the bottom of the Antarctic Ocean, a very non-conventional answer. But coming from a man who takes trampoline lessons when he’s at home, it’s no surprise to find Caribou wanting to tour with a very unorthodox musician when asked whom he would tour with, dead or alive.
“It’d be good to go on tour with Mozart to see what he’s all about, you know,” Snaith laughs. “I bet he puts on a pretty good show. No, he’s not [a huge influence]. I’d be more interested in the powdered wigs and clothes he’d be wearing.”