On the Henry Fonda theater stage, Caveman looked like a large ensemble, and despite their moniker, none of these guys looked like Neanderthals! They were opening for Ra Ra Riot on Saturday night and the crowd was mostly there for the headliner as it is always the case, but the group of girls on my left asked me (people are always asking me for some reasons) who was that band,… ‘Oh Caveman!’ visibly appreciating what they were discovering.
The band is relatively new – they formed in 2010 – but they have already released a second and self-titled album, following their 2011 debut ‘Coco Beware’. I haven’t spent too much time listening to them before going to the show, but live, their songs often started with a boom of noise-pop explosion, and then expanding into shoegazing soundscapes with wandering-spiraling hypnotic guitar, dynamic drumming, noisy synth and strong vocals gently floating above the overall complexity. Yes, it was complex music, very layered and bathing in an omnipresent fuzziness, but I discovered later, while reading their setlist, that their new songs were even more into this kind of thing.
‘It’s good to be back, this is our second home’, said singer Matthew Iwanusa. The band is from New York, but they were visibly very comfortable on stage, and they couldn’t have looked happier to be there. They didn’t waste any time and played a set balanced between their two albums, looking like an indie band already turned expansive-live act, in this large theater.
They opened with the tuneful ‘Thankful’ off ‘Coco Beware’, which has to be already the favorite of all American wrestlers (just look at Koko B. Ware), and soon ‘A Country’s King of Dreams’ and ‘Old Friend’, off their first release, sounded catchy and breezy, installing a sort of pastoral ambiance with ethereal vocal harmonies, ringing guitars, and lots of light drumming; they had two drummers and Iwanusa was sometimes adding a third one to the front. However, the new songs such as ‘Shut you down’, ‘Ankles’ sounded more out of reach, dreamier and more deeply buried in the fuzz and reverb of the guitars, quietly sprawling over some distant horizon. On ‘Where’s the Time’ Iwanusa’s powerful vocals floated even higher, and the atmosphere had reached a warmer and more expansive level with an engaging drumming, whereas ‘In the City’ had that dark New Wave vibe… I watched the official clip online and how did they get Julia Stiles for their video?
Each time, the poppy but subtle melody was slowly but surely emerging from thick layers of sound built by what it seemed to be dissociated elements that would perfectly fall together at the end… They also played ‘Over My Head’, whose title illustrated so well these eerie harmonies and overall beauty, a little Panda Bear, a little Beach Boys vibe behind a broken glass reflecting the sound in all directions; their dense and luminous sound was pulsating, oscillating and their deep noisy-fuzzy textures were making me walk on electrostatic cotton.
Setlist
Thankful
Shut you down
Ankles
A country’s king of dreams
Where’s the time
My time
In The City
I See You
Old Friend
Over my head
Easy water
