Music Review: The Cave Singers

On their newest album, The Cave Singers take a major step away from their tried and true sound that has brought them such success. Formerly signed to Matador Records, the home label of indie giants like Yo La Tengo and Belle and Sebastian, The Cave Singers rode the crest of the Seattle alternative wave that has steadily rolled across the music scene over the past decade. Their first three albums garnered comparisons to artists like Fleet Foxes, and their sound fit easily into the folk rock genre even as The Cave Singers moved from Matador to JagJaguwar. But, six years after The Cave Singers’ debut, the world is nearly saturated with supposedly independent folk rock groups. Maybe pushed away by the glut of similar-sounding bands, The Cave Singers’ fourth album employs a variety of shifts away from their usual aesthetic.

Listening to Naomi, The Cave Singers’ new LP, invoked the sense that I was a small dog, repeatedly leaping toward, but never quite reaching, a piece of raw meat sitting on the kitchen counter. The frustration stems from the realization that Naomi is an obvious and unsuccessful attempt of the Seattle-based band to do something “different but accessible.” The tracks often feel halfheartedly constructed. Many fail to reach any sort of climax, settling for cheap vocal “ooo”s. There are brief gestures to a wide spectrum of musical decades but no actual commitment to expanding or revitalizing the time periods’ characteristic elements.

As a result, the album becomes a mash-up of incompatible references. “Have to Pretend” starts with a chord progression that is eerily reminiscent of jam rock of the Steve Miller Band’s “Swingtown.” Most of the album is tinged with, at a minimum, a Graceland-era Paul Simon backbeat that overpowers what remains of the trio’s signature sound. There are at least four different kinds of pop that could be used to label certain sections: chamber pop, power pop, pop rock, synth pop. There are a smattering of other tracks that can be described at best as a semi-fun experiences that might belong on an early Vampire Weekend demo, albeit with Tom Petty on vocals.

The album is somewhat redeemed by its last three tracks. “Northern Lights” is a beautiful, rolling song that seamlessly transforms from a moving folk melody to a 1960s Doors backdrop. The final two tracks cohere around similar tendencies for early 1970s classic rock. These three tracks feel like a separate EP from the rest of the album, and the album would have been better if those songs were its core and not its afterthought.

If the final three tracks marked the direction The Cave Singers had decided to go instead of the pop overtone that dominates the majority of the tracks, Naomi would be sure to blow up in the same way as Foxygen’s retro We Are the 21st Century Ambassadors of Peace and Magic. There’s nothing wrong with creating music that sounds nostalgic, as long as the move is wholehearted. Originality never hurt anyone, either.