Home is a sanctuary. It’s where the light falls in those perfectly familiar ways at the edges of each day; where a multitude of silences coalesce into a profound peace that’s only ever willfully broken by the sounds of family, friends, or our own unhindered voices. It’s where we shed our social skins to recover from the rigours of an increasingly exposed life and rediscover a messy, private sense of self. Home is where we can just be.
On his glorious return to Caribou, Dan Snaith has his own homecoming of sorts. It’s been five years since the brilliance of Our Love, and in that time, Snaith has released a handful of solid records under his Daphni moniker. But with “Home”, Snaith returns to Caribou’s warm, lush textures, layered percussion, and trademark falsetto overlays. And thankfully, he sounds right at home. He says as much in a recent statement about the song: “We’ve all had moments when something changes suddenly and catalyses a change in your whole life — when you need to go back to something familiar, pick up the pieces and start again.”
Sampling a beautiful foundational loop courtesy of Gloria Barnes, Snaith employs the welcome familiarities of past Caribou releases as mentioned above, albeit with subtle liberating flourishes. Organic, soulful R&B mingles with saxophones and enormous beats and tom fills to create a vibe reminiscent of J Dilla, The Avalanches, DJ Koze, plus any number of Motown favourites.
“Home”’s beauty is not subtle; it hits you immediately and makes you lament the song’s criminally short runtime. That said, the immense emotional resonance reveals itself in how Snaith’s vocals actively engage with Barnes’s sample. His short verses speak to renewal, independence, joy, and solitude, all before these sentiments are immaculately amplified by Barnes’s refrain. In a mutual recognition of the joys of homecoming, the two artists feel intrinsically connected over this two-and-a-half-minute burst of euphoric bliss.
