Caribou‘s Dan Snaith has announced the first album from his Daphni alter ego in over three years. It’s titled Butterfly and will be out February 6 via Jiaolong.
The album includes “Josephine,” “Eleven,” “Sad Piano House” and “Clap Your Hands,” which were released as singles earlier this year and he’s just shared two more songs from it: the breezy, tropical “Lucky” and disco banger “Waiting So Long,” which is listed as “featuring Caribou.” Seeing how Caribou and Daphni are the same person, this notation might make understanding what makes a song one project or the other even more confusing. Dan is here to explain:
People understandably always ask about the difference between Caribou and Daphni music – how I decide which is which. I think there have been times where the music I’ve made under the two aliases has been farther apart and times – eg right now – where they’re closer together. One big thing that has always differentiated them is my voice. I’ve never sung on a Daphni track. When I started ‘Waiting So Long’ initially it was an instrumental. The lyric and the melody came to me as I was working on it and I just recorded it without thinking too much about it, but when I listened back to it a few days later it was the first time that i’ve had the sense that a track belonged to both aliases – like Daphni had sampled a Caribou vocal or something like that. I’m not in the midst of some existential crisis; I haven’t, hopefully, slipped too deep into the welcoming waters of the pool of Narcissus; I don’t agonise about what track ends up under what alias – in fact the opposite. I worry about it less than ever and just go with my gut instinct. On a practical level I just felt like this was a track that both Daphni and Caribou fans might want to hear.
With that all cleared up, listen to “Lucky” and “Waiting So Long” below.
Butterfly:
1. Sad Piano House
2. Clap Your Hands
3. Hang
4. Lucky
5. Waiting So Long
6. Napoleon’s Rock
7. Good Night Baby
8. Talk To Me
9. Two Maps
10. Josephine
11. Miles Smiths
12. Goldie
13. Caterpillar
14. Shifty
15. Invention
16. Eleven