On the final afternoon of SXSW, I catch up with half of New York band Caveman for what locks in as my last on site artist interview. By this stage, everyone’s looking at the finishing line of SXSW Music and loading up on the tobacco and Red Bulls just to get to the end. For Caveman, who in 2016 made their first trip to SXSW in two years, this journey out to Austin from the East Coast has been all about Otero War, their new album.
Sitting down with frontman Matthew Iwanusa and guitarist Jimmy Carbonetti, it’s obvious that the band have been stoked to have been able to bring a whole new record of material out to SXSW this time round, instead of just coming out to showcase and remind people who they are.
“It’s exciting to be back,” Iwanusa says, lighting up a cigarette. “It’s nice to be here with a new record; it’s exciting to be here and promoting something new.”
“It’s just been great having something to promote,” Carbonetti adds. “It’s fun having people come out to the shows and talk about it. It’s nice to have it planned where, you have a couple of songs coming out rather than it just being like, ‘It’s really fun to be here, lets just go’. Both are great things to do, but it’s nice to have a plan. We’ve just signed with a new label, Cinematic, who has been great too, so it’s fun!”
Going into 2016 with a new album and a new live show in mind have been two projects Caveman really sunk their teeth into. Having formed for themselves a solid live following over the past five or six years has obviously changed the dynamic within the band itself. The lads talk me through how the last few months in particular have treated them while working on Otero War (due out June 17th).
“It’s definitely different,” Iwanusa says. “We have a new drummer, which is interesting and not in a bad way. In a really cool way. We didn’t record with him [though], so it’s fun. As much as we worked on all these songs and really tried to make them sound live in the studio, nothing sounds the same as when you play them for a long period of time every night. They’re getting more exciting every day. It’s cool.”
“For me, it’s been exciting; not like there was anything wrong with the other drummer, but it’s been fun to have this new thing that’s refreshing.”
Otero War itself represents three years of work and change – the album has seen Iwanusa take over creatively more than before, completely a lot of the songwriting while on the road and then rewriting before hitting the studio with the rest of the band to refine and perfect the foundations of killer material he’d already worked on.
“On our last two records, we were writing at the same time as recording,” Carbonetti explains. “For this one, we spent a good amount of time really going through every part of the song and really focusing on big parts that made sense.”
“I think that everyone was always telling us, ‘You guys should record a live record’ forever.” Iwanusa says. “They’ve always been saying that. I think this record is really just us playing together and making it sound big. For every song we were like, ‘Let’s just make this sound big, whatever it is, every song’. There are a few that aren’t like that, but the majority are big. It’s fun.”
“This is definitely the first record where we all, for sure, knew the vision going into it. As a team of people, understanding how to build that. All of us together had the same idea.”
Reflecting on how much Caveman has developed as a creative unit since CoCo Beware dropped in 2011, through to their self-titled sophomore album in 2013 and now, both musicians admit that they pushed a lot harder in raising the bar on Otero War.
“”In The City” is definitely a song that, to me, bridged the gap between the first record and this record.” Iwanusa says. “It was inspiring and I think we’ve beaten that song on this record, but it was definitely a cool song to go, ‘Alright, this is exactly how it should sound’. There are some moments on the last record where it should have pushed more and now we’re able to do it with a whole new album.”
Being based in New York and working in this type of music scene where bands are coming and going, trends are every changing and there’s such an influx of new sounds and creatives making the bubbling concrete jungle their home, both Iwanusa and Carbonetti comment on the nature of being a working musician in New York and its effect on their output.
“I feel like, with New York, you have to be confident people and really just believe in what you’re doing and just work really hard.” Carbonetti says. “Don’t stop because always, if you’re going to slack on something, there’ll be someone right behind you. It pushes you.”
“At first, we really embraced the whole Brooklyn music scene,” Iwanusa says. “Now, I think we’ve done that and we really want to push it more so it’s not like, we’ll go to California and it’s like, ‘This Brooklyn band…’ We want it to be ‘just a band’, more worldwide.”
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Otero War is available for pre-order now via iTunes, Amazon and Google Play. Head on over to Caveman’s website for more information!
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