This time will be the good one: after having been postponed, then postponed again, the Caribou concert – with the excellent American composer Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith in the first part – will finally take place on November 22. In a crowded MTelus where spectators will be allowed to dance! “At the time our interview was scheduled, I still had no confirmation that this concert in Montreal would even take place – what a privilege to be able to invite people to dance again! »Comments Dan Snaith, who, like most of his fellow musicians, is now back on the road with his orchestra, after crossing the desert for more than a year and a half.
“And the last time we spoke, I was rehearsing the show before going on tour. Our previous conversation took place in February 2020, when the excellent Suddenly, his ninth career album and fifth album under the name Caribou. “Then, at the beginning of March, we left our small practice room to rehearse in this huge studio, with the lighting system and the video screens,” recalls Snaith. We were already talking about the virus, but it was going over our heads, focused as we were on this show. “
The first stop was to be in Toronto, followed by Montreal, on March 23, 2020. The decision to cancel everything was taken the day before his departure. “Everyone had a hard time realizing what was going on, as if we were in complete denial of reality. The gravity of the crisis had not affected us… ”
During confinement, Dan did not want to give a concert online, “not after putting on this show intended for rooms full of people dancing.” He also did not take advantage of the forced shutdown to launch his ambient album… “The thing is, I had just done it, my containment album, just before the pandemic”, he suggests speaking. of Suddenly.
“It is precisely a record which speaks of the need to adapt to sudden and unexpected events and to try to find something positive in them!” It’s so weird that this album came out then and in a way it’s also really neat because I got a lot of feedback from people who listened to him in circumstances I hadn’t foreseen and who were fine with the confinement. Like my songs are what we’re going through – hey there’s even a song called Home, to listen to stuck at home. “
Go through
Apart from an album of remixed versions (by friends Four Tet, Jessy Lanza and Floating Points, among others) of songs by Suddenly, Snaith – who this year marks the 20e anniversary of the release of his first album Start Breaking my Heart, then under the name Manitoba – released a single unreleased song: You can do it, a little house bomb full of hope contrasting with the grooves melancholy of the album which preceded it. A song especially dedicated to the memory of his father who died last July: “I did not speak about it when I released Suddenly, but the inspiration behind this album came to me a lot from my father’s illness, from which we knew he would never recover. “
It will be on the program of the concert that he is about to present to us: “I composed it towards the end of his life, but I also composed it when the vaccination was going well. Because, you see, I am an incurable optimist! Even during that horrific first lockdown, I was motivated by the fact that collectively the scientists of the world designed these vaccines and within nine months they were being injected into our arms – it’s amazing, when we think about it! Says Snaith who, like his father (and sister Nina), has a doctorate in mathematics. “I have always been inhabited by this feeling : we will pass through. The conviction that we will get out of it thanks to the noble ideas of medicine and science, thanks to this arsenal of knowledge and creativity. “
We are not out yet, insists Snaith when he sees the threat of a fifth wave at home, in Great Britain, but the tour is now on the agenda, for audiences doubly vaccinated. He gave his first concert in 18 months last August, playing at the Green Man Festival. “For many of us, musicians and festival-goers, it was then one of the first outdoor festivals to take place, without crowd restrictions. Here again, we didn’t really believe it: playing in a festival? It was unreal to experience that! “
I have always been inhabited by this feeling : we will get through. The conviction that we will get out of it thanks to the noble ideas of medicine and science, thanks to this arsenal of knowledge and creativity.
The show he gave, and the one he will present at MTelus, has changed a lot since March 2020, Snaith admits. “We had edited a lot of songs, some more dancing, but others much calmer and melancholy like on Suddenly. Before this first festival concert, we said to ourselves that we just had to allow the public to express their joy at rediscovering freedom, collectively. And man did it ever happen ! It’s okay to play in front of enthusiastic crowds, but this time everyone was smiling. Raw joy! “
“The memories of that first concert! abounds Dan Snaith. It is cherishing what we have so missed, as musicians, the pleasure of the tour and the crowds. It is also understanding that after all that we have lived, it is possible to come back to it. I know colleagues who complained, before the pandemic: “Ah… I have to get up early to go give this concert.” Me, I always refused to be that kind of guy. Giving concerts is a privilege.