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Caged Animals

USA - Lucky Number / Cooperative

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.

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.”

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Caged Animals : ‘All the Beautiful Things In The World’ (NSFW) from Jamie Harley on Vimeo.