Crayon

Crayons are democratic tools — waxy, imprecise, joyfully available to children who haven't yet learned what they can't do. The track shares that quality: it doesn't pursue polish or sophistication, operating happily in primary colors and broad strokes, finding its pleasures in directness rather than refinement. This is Snaith unencumbered by the desire to make Important Music, content to make music that simply feels good from the inside and the outside simultaneously, the making and the listening equally satisfied by the same generous imprecision. The production has warmth rather than complexity, a textural honesty that says these are what these sounds actually sound like, rather than attempting to perfect and conceal the traces of their making. From the earlier catalog, before Andorra's polish and Swim's conceptual architecture, "Crayon" exists in a happy creative freedom that subsequent constraints would structure into something grander. There's genuine joy in the music-making, an unselfconsciousness that no amount of technical skill can fully recreate once lost to experience. For this reason some listeners return to Caribou's earliest work with nostalgia not for a lost era but for a lost relationship to making — when not yet knowing was still permission to try absolutely anything.