Caribou - The Milk of Human Kindness

The Milk of Human Kindness was the first album Dan Snaith made under the Caribou name, and it still sounds like a crate of psych records set loose in a room full of drums.

Snaith had been recording as Manitoba until a 2004 legal threat from punk singer Handsome Dick Manitoba forced a rethink. He landed on Caribou and released this album in 2005, between Up in Flames and Andorra, catching him midway between dense sample collage and the warmer songcraft that would follow.

The pulse comes from layered, looping drums that build until they feel hypnotic, with hazy vocals and bright melodic fragments floating over the top. Yeti opens the record with real momentum, Bees and Hello Hammerheads sit at its dreamy heart, and Barnowl brings the curtain down.

There is a krautrock patience to the way grooves are allowed to unfold, and a pop sensibility that keeps everything from drifting too far into abstraction, even at its most adventurous. The title borrows from Macbeth, which suits a record this generous with its ideas.

Years before Our Love and Suddenly filled festival fields, this is where the Caribou sound first took shape, and it makes a lovely companion to the later records.