Caged Animals releasing 'Escape Artist' (listen), announce Brooklyn residency
Brooklyn band Caged Animals release their third album, Escape Artist, this week. It’s their first album in five years and a lot has happened in frontman Vin Cacchione’s world since In The Land Of Giants. Right before the birth of his daughter, Alaska, the original version of the album was lost when Vin’s laptop was stolen in Montreal while on tour with Darwin Deez. “Losing the computer felt like a sad sign about the fate of our music,” Vin says, but once they got back to Brooklyn, playing a show at Knitting Factory on his 30th Birthday, he found himself with new conviction about the music and began working on it again:
Some of the missing tunes starting returning, but most importantly new ideas flowed with an emotional weight that reminded me I was on the right path. I got a blue-collar job doing home deliveries of medical oxygen to make sure we’d be OK and in my down time I kept my nose down on the record. The majority of what ended up being the final album was made during the first year of Alaska’s life in our little railroad apartment in Bushwick.
My close friend, the writer Larry ‘Ratso’ Sloman (a long time supporter of my music and musical collaborator), gave me a copy of his Houdini biography The Secret Life of Houdini around this time. The book was incredibly inspiring and, in it, I found the central the metaphor for the songs I was writing.
I think Escape Artist is the best album we have made and looking back I’m grateful for how hard it was to accomplish. It made me stronger, made want to work harder, tested my faith, and renewed my conviction for making music in the process.
The finished product is a lovely, warm record made even more lush by alto-saxophonist Chris Aiello, and Julian Koster (The Music Tapes, Neutral Milk Hotel) who plays singing saw on the lovely “Ghost Riding.” Caged Animals have always had a knack of making hopeful music that never comes off trite, and Cacchione’s easy way with melody is at its best here. A full stream of the album premieres in this post and you can listen below.
Caged Animals will celebrate Escape Artist‘s release with a residency at Brooklyn’s Rose Gold every Wednesday in September. The 9/5 show is with Toby Goodshank, True Dreams and Wooing; 9/12 is with Endless Arrows, Kyle Avallone, Turner Cody and Ratso; 9/19 is with Oil Bay, Frankie Sunswept, Kissing is a Crime, and Soft Black; and 9/26 is with “Spicy Dog Healthcare Plays Desert Station,” The Watershed Moments and a “very special guest.” Check out the flyer for the residencies below.
