It is amazing what can happen when you allow yourself to be free of someone else’s preconceptions, free from someone else’s expectations and free from the worry about conforming to someone else’s notion of what is best for you and the art that you create.
A decision to rely solely on their own artistic instincts, talent and the irrepressible bond that had been created between them was the guiding ambitious impulse driving the first full-length album from Montreal pop/rock trio Caveboy – Night in the Park, Kiss in the Dark, set to be released Jan. 31.
The album is a tour de force of exemplary songcraft, will with a bold confidence, a sense of fun, a firm grasp on the cornerstone elements of crafting memorable melodies, and clever lyrical computations that make for a listening experience that is as enjoyable as it is thought provoking – with the proverbial icing on the cake being the inimitable and delightful vocal harmonies crated by band members Michelle Bensimon (lead vocals, guitar, synth), bassist/synths Isabelle Banos and drummer/percussionist Lana Cooney.
“People seem to be really loving the new music. We’re hearing from them that there is definitely a difference from this record to our previous [EP which came out in 2015, not long after the band formed]. It’s like people are just connecting to a lot of the new songs in a deeper way and that’s really exciting for us. I think some of the evolution and growth in our sound is from the passage of time and growing and all of the life experiences we have had. We also decided to just start making music for us and for the people who have shown us support, as opposed to maybe making music that we think people want to hear, or doing it with any sort of intention other than just because we want to write specific songs,” said Bensimon, during a recent promotional stop in Toronto.
“We wrote so much music in the last year and we allowed ourselves to get a lot more vulnerable and open and honest and share our stories collectively and as individuals. I think a lot of it was about just letting go of the attitude that, well it should be like this or it’s supposed to sound like that, and just doing whatever felt right in our gut, in our soul and based on our pure love for the music. And that really shifted our songwriting and allowed us to let go of all the stress and all the things we felt we had to do, and we were able to write from a real honest place.
“And then we started working with our producer, Derek Hoffman, who just took everything to the next level. Without changing who we are, he was able to enhance what was already there, which I think is a producer’s job. But it’s a lot harder than it seems. It has to be the perfect fit, and it really was the absoluter perfect fit for Caveboy.”
Bensimon, Cooney and Banos have been friends since elementary school, and grew up playing together and apart in various bands. Five years ago, they decided to join creative forces and make a serious attempt at making music their vocation as well as their passion. So, as with many excellent bands throughout rock history, they started hashing out songs in a garage.
“It’s a total rock and roll garage band story. Caveboy really came together in 2015 when we honed in on what our sound was and wanted to come out strong and with a strong name that represented who we are. We have all had music in our lives since we were kids and early on our base was Lana’s mom’s garage in a suburb of Montreal,” said Bensimon.
“I think it’s a once in a lifetime relationship of three people who are basically like family members at this point. And I don’t think any of us can imagine another relationship or musical collaboration that would ever feel like this. We grew up together and have grown together but never grew apart, which I think is a really huge thing as you travel through your teens and your 20s to not grow apart and to only grow closer together and figuring out the relationships, figuring out the communications, figuring out how to laugh and to support one another. I think I can speak for everyone in that I don’t have as much fun with anyone else in the world that I do when the three of us are together. There’s not way we could get through so much without each other. It’s just so rare – and it must be rare because it feels so special.”
The special connection has created a buzzworthy band, which has had the opportunity to tour extensively, and also had a chance to earn opening slots for some significant acts, including Wintersleep, Arkells, Tash Sultana and Ria Mae, as well as festival appearances at SXSW, Osheaga, Pride Toronto and the Halifax Pop Explosion. The band’s music has also appeared in The New Romantic, Orange is the New Black and Killjoys.
“Because we love being together so much, most of our music comes together when we’re all in the same place. In general terms, we love a good jam session. We just love jamming out and that morphs into maybe working on some parts and then we start writing vocals and start writing all sorts of other parts and then a song comes together from that. Or, one person will bring in an idea and we will take if from there,” Bensimon explained.
“For this record, we went to a cottage and we wrote a song a day in the jam space we created there, just really trying to hammer out as much as we could together in that environment. And even if one person would write a song, it would only really come together when the three of us had our hands on it. So, we’re really collaborative and super focused on just sharing all our ideas and making it as much of a unit as we can for every song.
“The theme of growth is a huge part of this record – growing into things, growing out of things, this whole idea that there is this ebb and flow through the relationships in out lives and through the passage of time as we age, things will obviously change. We’re all in our 30s now and as we go through this next decade, all sorts of new things will be coming up and they will definitely influence our writing. But even back in out 20s we were longing for a simpler life. As technology and social media have become such major focal points, many people want to hold onto the past in this really intense way. We listen to a lot of vinyl; we listen to a lot of older music and it’s really hard to let go of that time and move forward into a highly technology-driven future kind of place. So, there’s definitely this overall theme of nostalgia and holding onto the past, while still trying to move forward.”
Thus far the four singles release from Night in the Park, Kiss in the Dark have garnered lots of plays and streams and acclaim from both fans and the industry alike – not a surprise considering the amount of thought and effort put into them by Caveboy, in no small part infused with the creative authenticity that inspired the entirety of the album in the first place.
“Landslide is an interesting one because we actually released it in 2018, but it was a different iteration of the song. Then we went into the studio with Derek and decided to re-release a new version of it because it had changed so much. We also had a video, so we just recut the video to fit the new version. For that song, we wrote it in our jam space, and it was one of those times when we were writing a song a day. We always had this Motown-inspired vibe that just felt really natural when we started writing the music for what would become Landslide. We knew that we wanted multiple gang-style vocals in the chorus and then it all just sort of came together thanks to Derek. Originally it also had a bunch of guitar in it and we took that out and made that synth in the chorus, that little accent synth which really brought it more into the world of what we were creating with this record,” Bensimon explained.
“When I was talking about technology and how fast things are moving, Hide Your Love is all about that. I think we have all been in a room with someone, or out to dinner, whether it’s a partner or a friend, who spends their time on their phone. And it’s really that moment and that feeling of ‘look how much we’re going to miss out on life if this continues.’ But it’s very cheeky, like a cheeky version of how we feel about that,” Bensimon said.
“And we were listening to a ton of ABBA, we were like dancing and singing around the room to Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie, and we wanted to write something with a big of that disco flavour and Hide Your Love came from that. We are huge ABBA fans, and we definitely pulled from them and the Bee Gees, from Fleetwood Mac, from the Beatles when we were thinking about the kind of harmonies that we wanted. We wanted them to sometimes be very tight and heavy in the mix and then sometimes washy. Silk For Gold was one that we did write at the cottage jam space and was one of the first ones that we had written when we were writing for the new record. The original name was In A Palace, because it always felt like it was this regal song about being alone in this giant palace and ridding yourself of everything and feeling liberated. It’s really about that moment when you wake up on day and you realize that you’re finally okay.”
Two sides of a relationship are explored on the songs I Wonder and Obsessed, according to Bensimon.
“I Wonder was originally a song that I wrote. I showed it to Lana and Isabelle, and they loved it and Derek loved it as well. So, we kind of reworked it to make it fit the album. For me, it was really about coming to the end of a relationship and kind of not accepting that it was fully over. It was a really heartbreaking time and that song came from that experience,” she said.
“Obsessed was similar to I Wonder where I brought it in, and everyone really loved it and we ‘Caveboyed’ it up. It’s just about that raw desire you sometimes feel. And it’s the most to the point song lyrically on the album. It’s that sense of urgency and confusion you can feel, but also being really straightforward and to the point.”
For any act trying to establish an identity, some credibility and a bona fide audience as we embark upon the third decade of the 21st century, there is always some question as to the viability and validity of releasing a full album. Raised on the big records of the 1970s and 1980s, and wanting to make a bold, comprehensive and complete statement, it wasn’t much of a debate as the long-playing format – preceded by some singles, was the chosen vehicle for Caveboy.
“We had so many people saying, ‘you should put out singles only, you should put out an EP only.’ But, again, going with our gut and that change of perspective that we’re doing this for us now, we always wanted to make a full record. It’s been no question. I think it was 2016 and we were sitting around Isabelle’s house listening to Pink Floyd and all these great records and we were like, ‘we have to do this.’ It’s part of us being a band, and we wanted to hold that vinyl, we wanted to hold that CD, we wanted that experience for our own music,” said Bensimon.
“It also feels like these songs are just so cohesive with each other that releasing them in any other format wouldn’t have made sense. It would have been impossible to cut down the songs to an EP. In short, we just didn’t want to do it. This is a statement, that’s how it feels. This is the most authentic Caveboy music and it really does tell people who Caveboy is. This record really speaks to that; it speaks to the youthfulness and nostalgia, even that painful nostalgia where you’re just coming of age and being an adult and try to let go and all these things that we all go through.”
After a short run through Ontario that saw the trio play twice in Toronto, as well as in Kingston and Ottawa, Caveboy’s official album launch party for Night in the Park, Kiss in the Dark takes place on home turf, Saturday, Feb. 8, at the PHI Centre in Montreal.
In March the band will be headed to New York City to participate in the prestigious New Colossus Festival.
For more information on the band, on the new album and upcoming tour dates, visit their various social media platforms, or https://www.caveboymusic.com.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
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