Some bands worm their way into your head when youre not looking. What theyre trying to do seems mystifying at first but with further listening it becomes clearer until you’ve realized youre humming along, bouncing to the tune, and absorbed in a cozy box of genius.
Caveman is one such band. The members, fairly new to the New York indie-scene, have toured with bands such as Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes and White Rabbits, but have not received that much attention before recently in anticipation of their new album, Coco Beware. Bending genres in an unusual way, Coco Beware, has the feel of a young virgin whose just had a nip of the darkness and disappeared into the joyous monotony of a compromising existence. In other words, Coco Beware, is an album made for post-post modern looking for a way to get out of fads and gimmickry and just sit in on an honest and fluid jam session.
Yes, Cavemans first album has a few loose bolts and hiccups, but for the most part its the thread of a triumph. The tracks are well-ordered, the percussion is animalistic, and underneath a nebula of synth and droning guitars the melodies turn to gold. The layered-harmonic fog that fills in the album’s tracks has feel of TV on the Radio Return to Cookie Mountain to it, but doesnt bear the burden of the apocalypse. Its like an ethereal version of the TOTRs landscaping with a more dreamy wash of optimism.
The song, A countrys King of Dreams, starts Coco Beware with a tribal drum and dark bass pairing that makes you think of a drum circle in some pagan gathering. When Caveman add in the atmosheric guitars and thin sharp synth, the song becomes something more, something different that is hard to describe. Its like The Shins, Oh, Inverted World, with a razor edge and a much more somber tone. By the time you get through the first track and the second track begins, you feel ready to start the whole album again.
The lyrics of the songs are not very lengthy—the verses almost always have a fairly short loop to Them and often dont repeat before another melody carries the song in a different direction.
The last song on the album, My Room, (and also the most accomplished) has the most interesting lyrics. It tells the story of misanthropy and post-modern angst. Hey Lorraine think of what you want no more / I got time read on up on the lies some more and then later the refrain, I dont like Children / I dont like people to come to my room / And I dont like silence / And I dont like people who need their own lies to come between us.
With the intelligence of a simple-minded poet and the seeming wisdom of a well-traveled band, Caveman, sounds like a band that’s been developing for the better part of a decade and not just the past couple years. The addictiveness of Decide the dark streams running through Easy Water and the surprisingly jovial nature of Old Friend make the album an amazing testament to the ingenuity and songcrafting ability of a precocious band. Its only time that will tell how far their abilities will take them.
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