Caveman
Caveman elicits nostalgia for 80s hair, Mead Composition Notebooks filled with teenage poetry, and tattered VHS cardboard sleeves protecting the magnetic-tape treasures within.
Borrowing from the sensibilities and affectations of the past is a risky move. The result can be hackneyed, derivative, and flat. But Caveman manages to create something familiar while maintaining their own voice and perspective. The result is a spaghetti western space opera set on the cyber-punk version of Tatooine. It’s a world filled with traveling space carnies, storm troopers, hover boards, and dusty high top sneakers. It’s music played on a stage where lasers flitter across the performers like buggy robotic fireflies while a holographic marquee flickers overhead in a way that makes you think it could short out and take down the entire PA system with it.
Caveman is fundamentally insecure music, mixing wistfulness with a foreboding sense of rejection and loss. It is fitting then, that 2016's Otero War was the soundtrack to a pretty shitty breakup. From subway platforms to windows-down car rides, Caveman both soothed and discomfited me through one of the more challenging times in recent memory.
Best for: driving with the windows down, dive bar jukeboxes, hipster running playlists, drunk texting your ex (not condoned and never happened, but still).
Live
I saw Caveman at Music Hall of Williamsburg in October 2016 with my buddy Paul. It's one of my favorite venues and they delivered the goods. Short video below is from that show, filmed by yours truly.