The Caribbean, Plastic Explosives

reviewed by dave heaton

"Songwriting is creating an intimate connection. Once you've established that, you can try some cool shit." - Michael Kentoff of The Caribbean, Erasing Clouds interview, July 2001

On their third full-length release Plastic Explosives, the Caribbean take the secret universe they've created and blow it up to 3-D, to Technicolor, to High-Definition. With a minimalist pop sound that's entirely their own, The Caribbean have always seemed like they're doing a lot with a little; like you've got one hammer, a couple nails, and three pieces of wood, and you build an entire town. Plastic Explosives especially feels that way. It's arranged in this careful, impeccable way; when a guitar rings out or a cymbal crashes, you hear and feel it, and it adds to the overall atmosphere, of the song and the album.

The Caribbean are minimalists, but resourceful ones. They're using not just guitars, bass, drums, but also ukulele, turntables, samplers, dulcimer, shaker, marimba, violin, banjo, ruffles, keyboards. (Ruffles?!?). And the overall effect doesn't seem small or slight, rather rich and gently overwhelming. Their songs are melodic, but not in a delivering-a-message or brainwash-you-with-my-tune sort of way. It's all more complicated than that. The songs feel very direct and tangible, yet also like they could float away at any moment, or come to us from an undiscovered parallel universe.

Lead vocalist Michael Kentoff sings in an enticing whisper/croon, as if on the surface he's casually but cautiously relating a secret story to us, while underneath he's delivering a new pop standard. Similarly their music is soft and sweet, but can't be brushed off as indie-pop fluff. There's something of substance going on, even if you can't find the right words to describe it.

For Plastic Explosives, the Caribbean have again used their voices and instruments to create an album that lives, that lays out before your ears like its own secret world. It feels like you're entering a physical space when you press "play", a remarkable achievement for a recording. Interludes linking the songs, with echoes of melodies heard or soon-to-be-heard, help cause this effect, but it's mostly in how vividly the songs themselves are arranged and presented.

Of course while Plastic Explosives is its own secret world, it's also a reflection of ours, portraying people we know in circumstances that are familiar even as they're presented like puzzles. Each song feels like a vignette or a short story, recounted by a clever, friendly, omniscient narrator. Sometimes those stories have echoes of spy fiction, of post 9/11 journalistic features, of lectures on computer technology, but they also often feel like they're about regular people and the mundane details of their lives (going to work, flying on airplanes, opening a business), that they're about us. In that way, Plastic Explosives is a real-world soundtrack – music by humans about humans, that feels very human. At the same time it feels like an enigma, like a ghost, and that's part of its magic.

{www.home-tapes.com, www.thecaribbeanisaband.com}