Nitasha Kapoor

This fall, Canadian musician Dan Snaith, also known as Caribou, is embarking on a three-month world tour across North America, South America, and Europe in support of his sixth studio album, Swim. The tour, comprised of 10 European festival dates and over 80 cities worldwide, will showcase Caribou’s explosive live presence, as well as his talents as a solo artist.

Snaith is from Dundas, Ontario, but currently resides in  England. On the road he is joined by fellow musicians Ryan Smith, Brad Weber, and John Schmersal, who together create a new and vibrant live show that is in a constant reinvention. The ongoing experimentation and collaboration between Snaith and his bandmates is important to his artistic process, and the change in dynamic between recording solo and playing live with a band is often welcome.

“We had three days off [recently] and we spent them going back and rehearsing and changing the set,” Snaith explains. “We’re playing a bunch of songs that we’ve never played before [and] we’re playing songs that we haven’t played in a long time. We are playing a lot of stuff from the new record,” he continues, “[but] we’ve reworked a lot of songs so drastically that they’re completely different.”

This is part of what makes Caribou a unique and unpredictable live act.

“I like the process of recording, of having control over every little thing,” he says. “And I also like collaborating and improvising and having it be more unexpected and uncontrolled when we’re performing.”

In addition to extensive touring and festival performances, Snaith has also received critical acclaim of Caribou albums, most notably Andorra, winner of the 2008 Polaris Music Prize. His most recent release, Swim, has been shortlisted for the 2010 Polaris Music Prize, which will be awarded later this month.

Caribou’s success in Canada-and Snaith’s national pride-has remained strong despite his relocation to London 10 years ago. Up until 2004, Snaith recorded and performed under the name Manitoba, until a lawsuit forced him to adopt Caribou as his new moniker.

“I wanted a name that had the same Canadian connotations [as Manitoba],” says Snaith. “Caribou had all the associations of the word ‘Manitoba’ for me.”

But despite his devotion to Canada, Snaith has seen his fan base grow worldwide in recent years.

“It strikes me more so how easily that music translates and how people come to our shows everywhere. Five hundred people come to our show in Seoul, or 1,000 people in Mexico City, and it’s just as many people as the ones who come to our shows in a city that I’ve spent a lot of time living in and played more often. It’s incredible.”

Since its release earlier this year, Swim has been touted by music critics as a successful but darker take on a psychedelic, dream-like sound, combining influences from rock, experimental, and various other genres. The album’s lyrics focus on the indecision and experimentation of love, rather than the emotional angst of his earlier releases.

One of Snaith’s main inspirations while creating Swim was European dance music, but Caribou has not turned into a dance band. He still focuses largely on unique instrumentation, harmonies, and vocal arrangements, which he combines  into cohesive (yet abstract) work.

“The recording process for me is so solitary. I never leave my house,” he says.

The transformative nature of Caribou’s recorded work lends itself to live performance in an interesting way, notes Snaith.

“Playing live is compromising what I had in mind, and the four of us working out what we collectively want it to sound like and changing [the music] as we play. As the tour goes on, songs change.”

After the tour wraps in December, Caribou shows no signs of slowing down.

“When I’m not on tour, I’m at home making music and living day-to-day life,” Snaith says. “The touring process is almost the polar opposite [of recording]; I’m always collaborating with the other guys in the band and always travelling and in a different place every night. But they’re both things that I enjoy doing, and musically they’re both things I enjoy doing, too.”

Caribou will be playing at Le National on September 16. Tickets are $22, and available at latulipe.ca.