Courtesy of Merge Records. 

2014 was, undoubtedly, the year of the “feels.‰” Suffice it to say, the “feels” encompasses being emotionally connected, engaging in meaningful interpersonal interactions and absorbing one‰’s environment. These days, it‰’s a frequently-used phrase; “feel” can be used either as a verb or noun. From punctuating a joke with “feel‰” to “feeling‰” hard, it‰’s played a big role in this year‰’s music, too.

Following 2010‰’s critically-acclaimed Swim, Dan Snaith of Caribou would not reinvent his style on this year‰’s #9 album, Our Love. Previous albums toyed with Four Tet-esque IDM and electronica/folktronica, but Our Love is Caribou, refined. It‰’s deeply groovy, and in its best moments, wonderfully textured. Synthesizers crescendo and arpeggiate with swirling basslines and samples in the albums‰’ best tracks like “Silver,‰” “Can‰’t Do Without You,‰” and “Back Home.‰” Driving percussion simmers underneath the surface of tracks like “Our Love‰” and “Julia Brightly‰” and then explodes into the fore. The album is part dance, part groove and part emotion all in equal measures, fluidly interchanging from track to track; it leaves the listener wide-eyed and swallowed up in the compositions.

Instrumentation on this album is truly Snaith‰’s career summed up: from his dance-oriented concepts on side project Daphni to the psychedelic electronica of Manitoba, the album has all of his best ideas and no filler. But the biggest improvement on Our Love isn‰’t instrumentation, but Snaith‰’s ideas put into place with his own voice and songwriting. Snaith has always been able to chop and layer his vocal stem into Caribou tracks well, and use his talent as a producer to his advantage (see: 2010‰’s “Sun‰” off of Swim), but Our Love is a marked improvement in his songwriting.

Our Love features his singing as well as Hyperdub artist Jessy Lanza, and it‰’s the most personal Caribou record to date. Snaith is in his mid-30‰’s, and is no longer a precocious talent in the electronic music field now dominated by baby-faced artists. And with age comes contextual change: Snaith is now a father as mentioned in a Pitchfork interview earlier this year. The entire album is about the fluidity of love, the fluidity and fickle nature of interpersonal relationships and Snaith‰’s vocal delivery drives that theme. The midpoint on the album comes in “Second Chance‰” which features Lanza (who opened for Caribou on his tour dates earlier this year). If the first part of the album is a man exploring his feelings on love and life, then this comes as the response, the moment where his lover speaks back to him. Our Love is not only a phenomenally produced album; it‰’s a well-thought out, careful one too.

Our Love ends with “Your Love Will Set You Free‰” and is a liberating a finish as any. It‰’s the exhale on an artist exploring his feelings and emotions and layering them into a beautiful, whole composition. It‰’s an emotional rollercoaster, vacillating between fear and sadness and deep, fruitful love. It‰’s the perfect embodiment of that silly phrase, “feel.‰Û