CAVEMAN
Caveman
(Shock)
There are moments of melodic and cleverly arranged promise in this New York indie five-piece’s follow-up to 2011’s CoCo Beware (which this reviewer quite liked as a slow-burner but which mostly smouldered beneath the radar) but the band’s tendency to sand the edges off their tracks with synth-washed soundscapes prevents most tracks from blossoming, let alone bear any fruit.
The repetition of building each track to a crescendo using that layered synth becomes tedious, detracting from layered mid-album highlights Over My Head and Pricey whose great reverbed guitar lines and thoughtful change-ups are drowned by that familiar cadence.
While herds of indie bands trample the American music scene savannah, Caveman may well have the smarts to feed off the stragglers and has probably enough sparks to light a campfire… but they’re a long way off from reinventing the wheel.
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