Junior Boys lend their remixing talents to “Odessa” off Caribou’s recent release Swim. Timothy Gabriele said this about the tune in his recent review: “Swim seems mostly to focus on wronged females who must either ‘swim’ or drown. Foremost is ‘Odessa’, the lead single and definitely one of the most defiantly eccentric of the bunch. The song is about a woman who is ‘tired of crying and she’s sick of these lies / She’s suffered him for far too many years of her life’ and is now ‘Taking the kids / Driving away’. The main hook is a processed vocal sample somewhere halfway between a dolorous weep and a ghostly moan. Its pairing with persistent bass, colorful keyboard rolls, cowbell tings, and microfunk accents seems mismatched at first, but the song grows on the listener after repeated spins. It has the tendency to recall the first time one hears the off-putting tenacity of Japan’s ‘Still Life in Mobile Homes’ opening up Tin Drum. Its conjunctions sound too aberrant to be pop proper until one adjusts him or herself outside of the conservatism of a 50-year radio model.”
