BIO – 2013
Caged Animals is the strangely life-affirming bedroom project of songwriter Vincent Cacchione, a New Jersey-born Italian living in Brooklyn. Known previously for the noirish folk-rock of his former band Soft Black, Cacchione carries a strongly traditional gene in his brand of glitch-friendly pop, the love of songwriting. Describing their sound as, both Underdog Pop and Existential R&B Caged Animals walk the line between artsy and accessible in an honest and attainable manner.
Their new album In The Land Of Giants was written and recorded over a two year period in Brooklyn, NY. “The idea,” according to principle songwriter Vincent Cacchione, “was to imbue computer-music with something human, to inject digital sounds with a soulful, uplifting sentiment.”
For Vin this process began as a reaction to his work with Soft Black. Sparked after the untimely death of Vin’s father, a New York-based stand up comedian, who set Vin down the creative path, Soft Black dealt heavily with issues of loss (2007’s Blue Gold), nightmares (2009’s The Earth is Black) and interpersonal demons (the yet to be released The Witching Hour).
“I had just spent three years writing a record called The Witching Hour and though I loved the work there was a huge part of me that felt guilty letting other people hear it. It all seemed to dark and I didn’t want to cloud anyone else’s life by letting them in on these feelings I had gone through.”
The writing of In The Land Of Giants was born from this reaction.
In most cases the songwriting took place very quickly. Cacchione’s principle asset remaining intuitive and direct. “I wanted to make a record that would speak to people in a simple language. Something honest that was deliberately not above anyone’s head and that would hopefully leave people in a good place.”
To allow this process to come to fruition Cacchione became meticulous about sheer recklessness. “I can easily become the type of person that will endlessly edit and craft something. I care so much about music and sometimes it’s my biggest flaw. My saving grace is that this type of thinking rarely produces any music that I love. To me it’s got to be there in that moment of pure emotional release from the beginning, otherwise you’re just working with numbers and theories.” This is clearly a similar principle that guided Caged Animals debut “Eat Their Own,” which featured 12 pop songs born entirely of recorded improvisation.
To find these songs Cacchione set about on a creative treasure-hunt, composing dozens of new ideas before unearthing what would become the album. “Most of the songs that made it to the record weren’t written by me,” explains Vin, “I almost feel like they were whispered into my ear by something entirely external.”
The production and arrangement of In The Land Of Giants was made of an opposite concept, however. Stretching out over a year-and-a-half long period, Cacchione set about on a self-immolating schedule to deliver the songs in their most idealized form. This workload would take its toll on his mental and physical health as well as his domestic and family relationships. “It was a complete obsession,” explains Vin, “I had just received my first publishing check, I knew I had some people that had faith in me and I wanted to prove them right.”
History has shown that this is an area that could easily lead to mistakes or madness, but thankfully for Vin he had some kind friends to help steer him out of the woods. The presence of Caged Animals strong live band is a welcome addition to the album in this regard. The drumming of Patrick Curry, vocals of Vin’s partner, Magali Charron, bass playing of his sister Talya, and multi-instrumentalism of Andrew Hoepfner, all added a kaleidoscopic excitement, and ultimately helped guide the album to finality.
“For me this was about delivering something classic in a modern way,” says Cacchione, ” I was after something similar to artists like Chad Van Gaalen, James Blake, Frank Ocean, or Majical Cloudz.”
Although these may have been the modern touchtones, Caged Animals musical palette stands entirely on its own. In The Land Of Giants houses a very natural feeling in this regard, most similar in some respects to the early work of John Lennon.
Thematically it deals a lot with faith, the big as seen by the small, and reaching toward a higher spiritual plane. It’s an underdog record built with old designs and new wood. As cosmic as it is rooted in the dirt, as sensitive as it is bombastic, entirely unselfconscious in its emotions.
The tracks are decorated with vibrant noise attacks, outbursts of saxophone and theremin, and the dulcet tones of celeste and vibraphone. But it’s the ghostly synthesizers, hip-twisting electronics, and intimate vocals that really cut to the core of its sound.
Cacchione’s lyrics are insightful and deserve a closer inspection. In some regards In The Land Of Giants feels like a concept record, a collection of tracks that, without any visible level of pretension, manage to inspire something quite literate.
In The Land Of Giants is ephemeral as it is visceral. Songs of spiritual yearning and idealism like “What You’re Looking For” and “Stop Hurting Each Other,” seem perfectly positioned dissolving into the disorder of “Cindy + Me’s” digital Bonnie & Clyde.
On tracks like “The Sound Of Thunder,” “We’re Playing With Fire,” “Too Much Dark” and “In The Land Of Giants,” Cacchione proves the albums point most concisely, this is a grown-up Pop record from an artist that is not afraid to risk being seen as uncool in order to deliver something genuine, a record that finds the beauty of love in the most unlikely places (“The Mute + The Mindreader,” “U + Yr Rocketship,” “A Psychic Lasso”) and plays very well at night (“Tiny Sounds”).
While Cacchione admits that this is the most spiritual record he’s ever made. This is more of a gospel record for the unidentified believer then it is anything specific. While it makes some very honest and idealistic statements the ball is left on the listener’s side of the court. Vin is just hopeful that he didn’t bum anyone out.
BIO – 2011/2012
“My other band, Soft Black, was on tour with our friends, Werewolves, both bands in a nine passenger van driving across America”, recalls Vincent Cacchione. “We were hot, AC-less, and running out of money. I had already begun experimenting with this weird brand of home-recorded pop, but it lacked an identity. The name, Caged Animals, crept into my head whilst driving in this over-stuffed tin can.”
As it turns out, Caged Animals is, not just in this case, a spontaneous and honest reaction to a sticky situation, both emotionally direct and refreshingly liberating in its communication.
Borne mostly out of playful, late-night improvisation on home recording equipment, and experimentation with tones and beats, Cacchione has created a highly personal, wistfully nostalgic world that basks in the golden glow of love both new (“Lips That Turn the Light to Fire”), and old (“Teflon Heart”), in the haze of regret (“This Summer I’ll Make It Up To You”) and the blur of days gone by (“The NJ Turnpike”). Taken collectively, these are songs which gather poignancy with every play, and resonance with every repeat, lending increasing profundity towards the fleeting moments in life which we only wish could linger a little longer.
To hear Cacchione tell it, Caged Animals emerged almost as a happy accident, but it was inevitably so. Music was introduced into his life from the start, when his jewellery engraver turned stand up comedian father Gino Cacchione used to take Vin on tour with him, blasting Lou Reed, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits on road trips, and turned into an escape when he died shortly after Vin’s 20th birthday. This drama affected Vin’s artistic qualities in the way of focusing him on avoiding any of his dad’s perceived missed opportunities and he started his first proper musical project, Soft Black, “It was sort of a forum for my lyric-based musical ideas. My father had just passed away, and I was feeling a bit lost”, he says. “I moved back home to look after my mom, who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, and began to write obsessively, trying to work though the situation I was living and the loss of my dad.” The resulting Soft Black album, “Blue Gold”, was a highly acclaimed but harrowing record, with the follow-up, “The Earth is Black (And Other Apocalyptic Lullabies For Children)” not much more light-hearted either, consisting, as it did, of a ten-song chronicle of a series of nightmares Cacchione had been having.
Caged Animals, therefore, arose as a reaction to the darkness: the soft-focus yin to Soft Black’s unrelenting yang. “I found myself more drawn to my home recording equipment as a means of expression than the pen and paper. The most important thing was allowing myself way more freedom in the realm of lyric. Many of my favourite Caged Animals’ tracks are first takes of pure feeling with no pre-conceived lyric attached, just off the top of the head. I feel like the two projects (when taken together) are an accurate description of my personality. I can be kind of a heavy and philosophical dude but Caged Animals reflects my lighter-hearted optimism, a cathartic expression, not indulgent of any myopic melancholy. For me, it feels like the most natural expression of myself, and I value emotional honesty in music more than anything else.”
This “emotional honesty” comes through with startling clarity on his vocals – even on the sweetest melodies, they are open, unvarnished, affecting in their rawness, like nerve endings exposed and dangling. “I’m really into the storytelling, unmasked and upfront side of singing. My favourite singers are able to do that effortlessly, so I take a lot of influence from voices like Diane Cluck, Jeff Mangum, Arthur Russell, and the aforementioned Bob Dylan.” These Cacchione vocals come combined with richly textured arrangements – shimmering guitar lines, and layered gossamer-like synths and beats – that call to mind the intoxicating psychedelia of The Elephant 6 Collective, Broadcast, and Spiritualized; no surprise, seeing as Cacchione says one of his aims with Caged Animals is “to massage the senses in the way that bands like Spacemen 3 did, albeit in a different mood.”
The album, “Eat Their Own”, a concept that has developed stronger and more succinct from Cacchione’s original self-titled cassette release in 2010, is a set of songs which are tender even as they are painful, beautiful yet often emotional, all of which belie their humble origins, being recorded at Cacchione’s home in Bushwick, Brooklyn, at “all hours of the day and night”.
“We live in a noisy, Hispanic neighbourhood; it’s very hard to record acoustic instruments here, so I tended to shy away from microphones as much as possible.” Expanding further on the acutely intimate, insular nature of the record, he explains, “While I was writing most of this music, I had no idea that it was going to be made available commercially or publicly, so it tends to be a pretty personal communication between man and computer. One exception to this rule is the song “Teflon Heart”, which I set out to make the mega-jam of the summer. I’d never written with that intent in mind but it was fun and rewarding.”
Even more enticing is the prospect of some forthcoming live shows. Having already performed at NYC’s Bowery Ballroom the live set shows a further expansion of the Caged Animals mindset, and is something of a family affair (as the band consists of Cacchione’s French-Canadian partner, Magali Charron, a classically trained violinist, as well as his talented little sister, Talya, and one of his oldest friends, Pat Curry) which Cacchione promises will “create a true spectacle. I’m very confident in our abilities to incite the love-in, and leave both audience and band in a better place.” And why should we try to fight such love?
