Track-By-Track zum Album des Quartetts aus New Jersey, das eine Vorliebe für poetische Elektronica hegt…
Schon vor einer ganzen Weile eschien das neue Album von CAGED ANIMALS. Hier reichen wir nun endlich die exklusiven Kommentare nach, die Sänger und Songwriter VINCENT CACCHIONE zu den Songs von In The Land Of Giants für uns verfasst hat…
TOO MUCH DARK
„Too Much Dark“ was the first song I wrote for the album. Almost three years went into the writing and by the time it was about to be recorded I was exhausted and began to feel guilty about sharing these emotions with other people. It just felt like there was already enough darkness in the universe and I didn’t want to add to it. Didn’t want to make anyone feel worse. I began to ask myself some serious questions. What did I really want to tell people? What did I really want people to feel? Light. „Too Much Dark“ was the philosophical answer to the spiritual dilemma. I think its one of the most pure songs I’ve ever been able to write.
STOP HURTING EACH OTHER
I have a life-long friend. His name is Bubba and we met in the 6th Grade in High School. We’ve always had this type of kinetic relationship when it comes to creativity. When I’m in our hometown, we have this habit of making mixes of music and driving around the quiet parts of our town, smoking weed in his car, and philosophizing. I don’t remember what was said in Bubba’s car the night I wrote, „Stop Hurting Each Other.“ He dropped me back at apartment around 5 a.m. and while the sun came up, the song was born.
CINDY + ME
I first heard Raymond Scott’s music after hours at a DIY venue in Brooklyn and I was completely transfixed. I picked up „The Manhattan Research, Inc“ album and began my love affair with his music. When I came across „Cindy Electronium,“ I didn’t know I’d sample it. I just kept listening to it over and over again. Somewhere in its lush fractal-producing tangles, a melody started playing to me. I cut out a piece of the arpeggiation, loaded it into the computer, and slowed it down to hip-hop tempo. In the song, I’m a crazed teenager in love, running away from home with the girl I love and some twisted view of the future. This is an update on Bonnie & Clyde for the digital generation.
THE SOUND OF THUNDER
This is an uplifting pop song that advises against running away from the inevitable. In the song I made it sound like I was talking to a friend but I think I was talking to myself. Maybe I was talking to you too. I don’t think there is any fatalism to this one despite the doom implied by the ever-present „thunder.“ To me it’s the idea that we should savor our lives and not be afraid. The music was inspired by my friend Cole. A while back he and I had a band together called Soft Black and now he writes and performs in a band called DIIV. It was his musical-mojo that inspired the searing guitar melody that follows each chorus.
U + YR ROCKETSHIP
Even though this album is a bit more philosophical then its predecessor, I don’t think it would be a proper Caged Animals album without at least one genuinely Psychedelic Bubblegum song. I wanted to write at least one song that a little kid could like too. It’s just to make you smile, and wag your tail. A love song to some unknown alien princess, propelled into life by a droning organ riff and Motorik beat. A Bubblegum Motorik, perhaps?
THE MUTE + THE MINDREADER
This is a song about understanding and communication. In the song a mute woman and a telepathic man are falling in love, communicating with each other in „their own special way,“ and learning how to share life together.
TINY SOUNDS
„Tiny Sounds“ is a song about a spiritual sort of insomnia. The kind that leads you to a higher understanding and appreciation of things like „the first train at five,“ „the same old re-runs,“ and how your computer can be your only friend. Musically it breaks some very special ground with the inclusion of a wicked Saxophone solo played by Chris Aiello.
WE’RE PLAYING WITH FIRE
Fearless pop.
A PSYCHIC LASSO
I really started to think about how so many of our gay greats, in the world of songwriting, tailored their couplets toward the heterosexual, so I decided I should do the opposite. The song is about a co-dependent but loving relationship and I made the characters two men, to pay tribute to those songwriters who often sacrificed a lyric that spoke for them, to express something universal.
IN THE LAND OF GIANTS
In the Summer of 2010 my girlfriend and I got married. We had to… Magali is Canadian and I’m American and we’d been living together illegally. That Summer we had our first problem at the border and we realized our only chance of staying together would be to get married. The year that followed was trying on both of us. She was applying for her green card and wasn’t allowed to leave the country. After an epic 18 month process of waiting we sat outside some Federal building in downtown Manhattan. I sat down in this park as she finalized the card and a pigeon walked up to my shoe. I tried to imagine what it must feel like to be such a small creature in land full of giants. I tried to imagine what it must feel like to be illegal in a country like America. The words flowed out of me like water.
(YOU’RE A GIANT NOW
Picks up where „In The Land Of Giants“ leaves off. A song that encourages people to do the impossible, to believe in yourself. This song was co-written with our drummer Patrick Curry on a THC-fueled journey into our inner-Rocky Balboas. It was fun and intuitive to co-write a song for the record with Pat. His unique musical sensibility helped guide the soulful drone of this track into it’s emotional peak.
WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR
Early in the writing of the album I was focused on cutting a path through the bad feelings and hurt inside looking to find something that was uplifting. This is a song about patience and faith and family. Themes that are very intrinsic to this album. If you’ve made it this far you deserve to hear my favorite song on the record. I always try to close out a record with a particular meaningful song. To end someplace that will leave the listener with something useful. I realize that in today’s 140-character music scene most listeners aren’t going to get that far but I’m not really making the type of albums that could be absorbed on the surface anyway. So I’m not worried about losing those listeners anyway.
CAGED ANIMALS
In The Land Of Giants
(Lucky Number Music / [PIAS] Cooperative)
VÖ: 01.09.2013
Autor: [EMAIL=friedrich.reip@popmonitor.de?Subject=Kontakt von der Website]Friedrich Reip[/EMAIL]
