The Caribbean Rides the “Vitamin Ship” into Enlightenment (premiere)

In the bloated realm of indie rock and pop, the Caribbean’s experiments in sound provide them the privilege of being able to truly be labeled as innovative. They have long been championed by PopMatters for their unique amalgam of sonic building blocks, combined to make a cohesive whole. For starters, they were heralded by our own Dave Heaton as the artists behind one of the Best Indie Pop Records of 2011 and have only seemed to continue ascending from there.

Celebrating the recent release of their latest single, the Washington, D.C.-based collective have paired it up with a new video tinged with psychedelics. Relying more on tone than lyricism and fuzziness than coherency, it’s inarguable that the Caribbean successfully continue their long-standing trend of developing labyrinths of music that come across as befuddling as they do evocative. That might sound like a slight at first, but it’s more or less a toast to their genius. The Caribbean has never colored within the lines, and they always seem to benefit from it. From both an audio and a visual perspective, they continue that streak with “Vitamin Ship”.

Via Bandcamp, the band describes “Vitamin Ship” as such: “The Vitamin Ship is set to attack a world where cats sun-sleep in a giant atrium and only the most privileged or security-cleared are permitted to experience the rarefied state of hypoxia.”

“Vitamin Ship” is the Caribbean’s first single from off of their forthcoming LP, yet to be named, coming out sometime early on in 2019.