Song Exploder - Caribou - Home

Episode Date: February 12, 2020

Dan Snaith has been making Caribou records since 2001. He won Canada’s Polaris music prize in 2007, and this month, he’s releasing the seventh Caribou album, Suddenly. In this episode, Dan breaks down the song “Home.” He talks about how he managed to get past several moments of creative uncertainty to figure out the final track. songexploder.net/caribou

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. If you'd have proposed that to me before I started this process, that, oh yeah, Dan, I think you should make a kind of hip-hop-influenced track that's like a duet with a 70s soul singer. I would have been like, that's never going to work. Dan's Naith has been making Caribou Records since 2001.

He won Canada's Polaris Music Prize in 2007, and this month he's releasing the 7th Caribou album. suddenly. In this episode, Dan breaks down the song Home. He talks about how he managed to get past several moments of creative uncertainty to figure out the final track. She's going home. Baby, I'm home. I'm home. Yeah, she's going home. Baby, I'm home.

This is Dan Snaith from Caribou. Every day, I come down into my studio and make something. I kind of turn off the critical part of my brain that thinks, Is this something that's going to be a caribou track? Is this going to be something that goes on an album? I'm just having fun. Every day, that's the process, is to just enjoy that. So that was very much the spirit in which I put this together.

I was browsing YouTube. When I first came across the sample that's the kind of core of this track, which is the track by Gloria Barnes, also called Home, it's kind of a lost soul gem. I've spent a lot of time in my life digging for records in dusty warehouses and flea markets and things. Now, just as often I'm looking for music on YouTube, and that's how I came across this track.

I kind of miss that sense of stumbling across something when you're there in a kind of backroom of a record store or wherever you might find something. But to be honest with you, the thing that I'm really interested in is the musical ideas, and that's always just as thrilling, no matter where you find it. So it's a beautiful song, so lovely to listen to, it's so memorable, and there's so much emotion in her recording

and her performance. You know, first and foremost, I'm a music fan, and just finding out about a piece of music that is new to me and exciting is the root of everything I do, really. I mean, I think just a love of music as a listener. But then it's hard to hear something sometimes and not think, oh, my goodness, you know,

how does this thing relate to the music that I make and could I do my own version of this idea or sample this in some way? And I think maybe from growing up listening to hip-hop, you know, finding the samples on movies, and Tribe Called Quest Records and idolizing people like Madlib, et cetera. I just have that impulse to be like, okay, that's a loop. The part that I've used from it is just the first few seconds looped.

The other part that loops is kind of the bit that repeats, baby, I'm home, I'm home, I'm home afterwards. I could immediately hear it oscillating back and forth between those two sections. I didn't know that it was going to be a caribou track or be a track that was going to be released or used in any way like that, but I just wanted to make a quick beat out of it. In my head, it was like a hip-hop instrumental, you know? I'd kind of taken a loop from this record

and done what I imagined a kind of 90s hip-hop producer would have done with it. But it wasn't clear like how that world, which I love, how that related to the music that I was making or that I've made in the past. I'm just always making these kind of little loops and ideas, and then I come back and revisit them later with a bit of hindsight or a bit of perspective from time passing and think, oh, maybe that would

be useful in some way, or maybe that does fit in with the other things I've been doing lately, but I just didn't know what to do with it. It sat that way for a year, probably a year and a half, two years, just on my hard drive with a collection of all these other draft ideas that I'd been making over the course of making the record. And, you know, I was like, I keep coming back to this, but so what next? It wasn't at all clear to me. At some point I thought, well, maybe it's the hip-hop drums that are kind of preventing me from seeing it in the prism of the music that I'm making aside from that. So I kind of played my own drums over the top of it. The drum parts that I played are played really, really quietly with the microphones really, really close to them.

You just get a really dry, intimate kind of drum sound, which I liked along with this. And then I'd play it for other people. I played it for, for example, Kieran Hapton Fortet is one of my main go-toes about, hey, would you give a listen to this thing that I've been working on? What do you think about it? He's always giving me kind of feedback about the music that I'm making, and I can reciprocate with the music that he makes. And in the credits to the song,

the first time this has ever happened is Kieran, Fortet, his credit as an arranger on this song as well. And it was his idea, actually, having the two versions, the one with the kind of hip-hop breakbeat on it, and the one with more me playing a drum kit on it. And immediately I was like, oh, that's great. And he actually said, hang on a minute, like I can hear this so exactly what I want so well.

Let me just chop these two versions that you've given me together. This would be easier to do than to describe. And so he sent this version back to me. When it kicks in at the beginning, it has a tougher beat. And then when I sing, it kind of had this kind of more intimate feel. She does just what she pleases, because she's happy on her own. I tried thinking about how to sing alongside this sample in a number of different ways.

And then it was actually a serendipitous coincidence or something that, well, unfortunate in some ways because a friend of mine had been through a difficult kind of toxic relationship and had left that relationship and, I mean, literally gone home, but also kind of figuratively grounded herself in her sense of home within herself and that kind of thing. So all of a sudden I was thinking about writing a song about her

and about that experience. And then I just realized that this loop that had been sitting there forever kind of had exactly those connotations within the lyric of the sample. The original song, it's a kind of love song about Gloria Barnes singing in character about somebody who's coming home to the person

that they love in some sense, whereas the song that I ended up writing inspired my friend's experience was more about breaking away from a relationship that was toxic and finding home within yourself. She's better off than she has. ever been. Now she's made a piece with everything.

That was the first time I thought, okay, maybe I could sing kind of, I mean, in some sense, in some weird sense, a duet, which if you'd have proposed that to me before I'd started this process that, oh yeah, Dan, I think you should make a kind of hip-hop influence track that's like a duet with a 70s soul singer, I would have been like, that's never going to work. But this kind of personal input from a friend's life and wanting to, you know, kind of honor them through telling their story was the key that unlocked bringing that together. It was easy to write the lyrics for this one because I was thinking of such a specific situation

and the refrain was kind of there in place already. So when I'd sing, it would be responded to by the Maybe I'm Home vocal part. And she picks up all the pieces. She's going home. Baby, I'm home. I'm home. Yeah, she's going home. The thing that was missing was a kind of third section of the song, a middle aid or a bridge. It just needed something so that you move harmonically somewhere else so that it can kind of end satisfyingly going back to the loop.

And I always got like a minute and a half in or wherever it is, two minutes, I can't remember. And I was like, I'm stuck. You know, there needs to be something here. And there just isn't. There's just a hole here. And that was the real stumbling block for months and months. and I tried so many different options, none of which quite fit.

This one, this version of the bridge that never was, kind of takes it to a more contemporary place. It's a kind of glossy Blade Runner sounding, but also kind of referencing R&B maybe to some degree. But it just, when I put it in the song, it was like the mood changes too much. The change from the verse and chorus to the bridge had to feel more natural,

and this one felt like too much of a stretch. And then I, I really thought I'd landed on it. This is something that I built up playing like a piano part and the drum part, get a kind of very vintage sound to it. It fits in with a kind of soul funk, jazz-influenced era, right? I was like, I finally cracked it, you know,

this is gonna be it, I'm gonna finish that song. And then the next day I came back to it, and I was like, ah, I don't know if it's quite the one. It's quite, again, it takes it into a different place. The rest of the song is kind of so classic sounding, I wanted this section to have a bit more of a kind of connection to contemporary hip-hop production, but that references that era. So actually, when I was finishing this, the newest title of the creator album had come out.

That's Igor, which just won the Grammy for Best Rap album. I was like listening to that and thinking, this is like treating old samples and things, but cutting them up in a way that seems really contemporary. So there was a kind of thought to do that, to have it be both new and old-sounding at the same time, this specific section of the song. That's me playing a kind of software version of a piano and then processing it so that the kind of pitch is oscillating in and out of tune.

You know, if it's just a kind of really clean piano sound, it seems too straight, too safe, so I'll affect it in some way in this case using that kind of effect of it, warbling in and out of tune a little bit. I'm always kind of trying to tread that line between something that's familiar and unfamiliar, whether it's taking a piano sound and then affecting in a way that you haven't heard before or taking a human voice and chopping it up so that it's kind of disembodied.

I like this idea of this really loud, disembodied voice that is not quite saying anything. You hear just a syllable or a kind of beginning of a word and make a kind of sense that there's somebody there about to sing, but they are not quite singing lyrics or words, but you kind of get a sense of a human voice in there. So it sounds more like a percussion instrument than it does like a vocal instrument. And then this is a kind of classic, ubiquitous sound on contemporary hip-hop and R&B, and pop music is the kind of tuned 808 bass drum sound. I thought it'd be interesting to have it in this context of something sounding more old but get a really gritty, rough-sounding 808 kick drum that's tuned kind of playing a baseline.

You know, I played this on a keyboard. and a lot of the feel to the records I make, I think, comes from not being a person who corrects things and quantizes, meaning leaving things leeway to be a little sloppy and offbeat. That's something that I think gives the music that you make personality. You know, if you locked everything on a grid, it just sounds like very robotic. So the saxophone on this track, there is actually some saxophone in the original sample. The additional saxophone is played by a musician named Colin Fisner. from Toronto. He heard that there was maybe a baritone sax or something in the original sample. He was like, what if I doubled that and then harmonized, and it just adds to it so nicely.

In this song, those saxophones are something that allows you to play with the dynamics and kind of make the song have more of a narrative arc and feel more like a song rather than a loop. That was like the last piece of the puzzle. And then I remember actually sitting back and listening to it, I was like, that's a song. Because you live with it so long when it's just bits and pieces of something, and it's not clear how it's going to come together. That's such a relief and so thrilling to think, yeah, I've got all the pieces to fit where they should.

A lot of the songs on this album and this one in particular tell the stories of people close to me, the people that I love, who've been through very difficult times in the last five years. And I want the music to kind of be a big hug and be supportive of the person that's the protagonist in these situations. this song sounds very optimistic and it sounds very positive and getting out of this situation, this relationship for this friend of mine was difficult

but was the best thing that could have happened. When I found the lyrics, she's better off than she has ever been, that was like a central thing that it could have that kind of uplifting sense to it, that it should feel jubilant in some sense. But also, a lot of the time, the making of the music is like a therapeutic process to myself. starting with nothing and then having something, you know, I still enjoy that so much after, you know,

more than 20 years of doing it. And now here's Home by Caribou in its entirety. Just what she pleases. She's happy on her own, and she picks up all the pieces. She's going home. Baby, I'm home, I'm home. Yeah, she's going home.

Baby, I'm home, I'm home. But she can teach me. She's going home Baby I'm home Yeah, she's going on Baby I'm home Because she's made her peace with everything For more information, visit

SongExploder.net slash Caribou I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length and this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh, her way.

I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that. It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Weinrobe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April.

and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzuchas, Josh Molina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings, John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In The Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website,

rishikash.co, or just go to songexploder.net slash live. That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is made by me and producer Christian Coons with production assistants from Olivia Wood and illustrations by Carlos Lerma. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of independent creative podcasts. Learn more about all of our shows at Radiotopia.fm. You can find Song Exploder on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Song Exploder.

My name is Rishi Kesh Hereway. Thanks for listening.