Andorra

Dan Snaith's project, Caribou, has always displayed a great reverence for the splashy opulence of '60s psychedelic-pop. If earlier albums, UP IN FLAMES and MILK OF HUMAN KINDNESS, borrowed liberally from his influences--sounding much like a panoply of carefully crafted snippets from the most blissed-out moments of pop music's past 30 years--ANDORRA polishes out the rough edges to reveal actual songs. Despite the newfound emphasis on songwriting cohesion, the album revels in deep layers of textural embellishment. Mixing in sound-collages, symphonic passages, and layered vocals, the music recalls the bold pop experimentation of George Martin and Brian Wilson. The opener, "Melody Day," combines a big-beat drum pattern with a dense but melodic wall-of-sound--rippling electronics and guitar cascade around Snaith's wispy falsetto, sounding like a throwback to both '60s garage pop and '90s shoegaze. On the album's closer, "Niobe," Snaith's perfectly constructed pop utopia unravels slightly, unveiling a fractured, inchoate wash of sound--almost as if he is trying to disclose the music's own underlying illusionism.