Send "Caveman " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 All right, that’s not quite fair. The Los Angeles quartet, they of syrupy harmonies and auxiliary percussion, had a bona fide hit on its hands with Gorilla Manor, its 2010 debut. That record came out in February, and by the time year-end lists rolled around in December, many of the writers who expressed such love for Gorilla Manor’s breezy pop somehow forgot entirely about the band when doing their final calculations. “Airplanes” still pops up on a mix CD in a friend’s car every now and then, but Local Natives seem to me to be another example of the tidal in-and-out pull of the indie blogosphere. Move forward a year, and a few thousand miles to Brooklyn, and you’ll arrive at the feet of Caveman and its debut, CoCo Beware. The group, led by yet another pleasant-voiced Brooklynite, Matthew Iwanusa, gets a lot of love in its hometown. For instance, Caveman was one of the “must-see” acts at 2011’s CMJ Music Festival, drawing buzz in a year where the festival had no clear hype-hoarders (for my money, the breakout act of the week was the beguiling Purity Ring. Since then, Caveman has headlined NYC’s wonderful Bowery Ballroom and received a write-up in the New York Times. New York takes care of its own. But a resume isn’t everything. Caveman certainly fits with a growing trend of non-threatening, wistful indie rock, the ranks of which range from the seriously talented (Bon Iver) to the what-might-have-been (Band of Horses) to the insipid (Death Cab for Cutie). You can’t fault a band for not wanting to offend. You can, though, fault them for putting you to sleep. That Local Natives record, as forgettable as many critics apparently found it to be, had some seriously endearing pop songcraft to deliver. Energetic, confident, subtly complex stuff (the steady momentum of “Wide Eyes,” the contagious warmth of “Who Knows Who Cares”). Caveman comes from comparable DNA, with a predilection for harmonies and plenty of attention given to the snare rim, but it doesn’t manage anything nearly as engaging as its Los Angeles counterparts’ similar explorations....full text |
| Pastemagazine |
| “Listenable” is the best way to describe Caveman’s debut album, CoCo Beware. The album, with all of its clacking drums, gently strummed rail-thin guitars and careful, pleasant melodies, is instantly catchy and likable on a first listen. Songs like “Decide” “Thankful” and “Easy Water”—easily the album’s standout cuts—plod along like lazy, slowed-down versions of early Shins tracks, and that’s a great thing. Frontman Matthew Iwanusa’s relaxed take on guitar-based rock is a unique sound that isn’t really trying to offend or take any unexpected twists or turns. Instead, the album is almost comforting by creating instantly recognizable, hummable melodies that feel just as familiar on the first listen as they do the 10th. But this instant listenability is something that makes CoCo Beware just good, not great. The album plays out like an exercise in patience, with verses and choruses filled with interesting progressions and entrancing melodies that don’t travel far, which is clearest in the questionable “Vampirer.” Instead of anticipating hooks or changes, listeners will find themselves noticing subtle changes and background noises on repeat listens....full text |
| Slantmagazine |
| The concept of "dad rock," like a lot of the stickier pejoratives circulating music blogs these days, doesn't truly mount a criticism of the genre it describes or the bands that are said to skirt its boundaries a bit too closely. Instead, it bypasses the hopelessly subjective conversation about the quality of the music, and shifts our attention to questions we can answer pretty much by reflex: What kind of people like this music and are they cool? Naturally, dads aren't cool. Even forgiven their tendency to like the Eagles and talk at length about "the Boss," dads would remain the villains of online music criticism, which is defined by its Oedipal revolt against the standard of importance established by Rolling Stone and classic-rock radio. It's a revolt that needed to happen, and it has produced a lively musical conversation in which dance music, hip-hop, and even pop are no longer met with preemptive derision, but one of the results is that a certain style of melodic, guitar-driven rock has been rebranded as fogie-ish and uninteresting. Even the Hold Steady, the last decade's most celebrated practitioners of the style, couldn't avoid having their hairlines (and waistlines) snickered at in reviews; the whole novelty was that they looked and sounded like a bar band, but played to younger, cooler, and eventually, huger audiences. Brooklyn's Caveman, like tourmates the War on Drugs, are one of a few young bands working to rehabilitate guitar rock's image by merging their decidedly dad-ish core influences with more experimental ideas derived from the aughts' explosive proliferation of indie acts. The most obvious points of reference for Caveman's debut album are Band of Horses and My Morning Jacket, who have made the case that a generous dousing of reverb is all it takes to make '70s rock sound fresh and anthemic again. True to that formula, the songs on Coco Beware tend to sound, well, cavernous. The first thing you hear when the album opens with "A Country's King of Dreams" is clattering, tom-heavy percussion reminiscent of Animal Collective; the next thing is singer Matthew Iwanusa's plaintive tenor, which bears more than a passing...full text |
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