This came out in 2001 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):
“I’ll straighten out my head in Fremont,” promise Washington, D.C. quirk-popsters Caribbean right off the bat on their hallucinogenic debut album. Somehow I just don’t see it happening.
These post-psychedelic bedroom-fi adventurers are way too gone to consider turning back. Like bands such as Olivia Tremor Control, dEUS — and as their name slyly implies — The Caribbean’s music is a trip. Although they set sail in the same pop seas as The Beach Boys and Beatles, these 11 mind-bending soundscapes constantly threaten to (and often do) come loose of their moorings, ignoring pop conventions like choruses, solos and rhyme scheme, preferring to drift along on waves of lysergic weirdness into uncharted waters teeming with skewed melodies, shambling drum beats and random studio effects. Actually, it’s hard to tell if it’s all as improvised as it seems, or just painstakingly crafted to sound that way. Either way, it’s a journey unlike any other.
