‘It’s over now,’ Dan Snaith, aka Caribou, aka Daphni, whispers on his latest album as the former – and for the first time in his decades-long career, you’re not quite sure whether to believe him. Honey finds the producer grappling with his many masks, somewhat merging his Caribou and Daphni personas into something uniquely uncertain and impressive, if slightly ungainly.
Snaith makes the puzzling choice to obscure his voice through AI manipulation for much of the album’s runtime, crafting a feminine falsetto mask. On Dear Life, this comes off particularly jarring – a breathy, uncanny valley that feels more ‘tech demo’ than ‘tear-jerker’. Yet when the trick lands, as on the soaring Come Find Me, it’s transcendent – infant like coos wrapped in rushing synth chords that make a convincing case for the experiment.
The album’s production is a Frankenstein’s monster of Snaith’s personas. Broke My Heart grafts UK Funky percussion onto songwriter-y emotionalism, while Only You can’t decide if it wants to soundtrack a festival peak or a bedroom cry. The closest thing to a thesis statement comes in Got To Change, which plays like a maximalist remix of Caribou classic Can’t Do Without You – all repeating mantras and crescendos pushed to breaking point.
By the time Snaith’s voice returns unfettered on Over Now, it feels like coming up for air. It’s a reminder of what Snaith does best – making dance music that thinks deeply, and feels even deeper.
Honey is an album of competing impulses – the vulnerable songwriter versus the club technician, the human voice versus its digital simulacra. Sometimes these tensions produce moments of genuine transcendence, but just as often they collapse into well-meaning muddle. Yet even at its most confused, the record is never less than fascinating – a document of an artist pushing against his boundaries, even if he occasionally pushes too far.
Download / stream Honey here
