Band Profile: Caveboy Has Crawled Out of Hibernation
Dream-Pop Trio Set to Perform in Montreal After a Year of Recording
A secluded lodge in the misty Irish countryside has bore many musical legends. Skillful tellers of poetic tales and masters of melodies like Tom Jones, Sinead O’Connor, Michael Jackson, and Muse.
So the stakes were high for Montreal’s alt dream-pop trio Caveboy while they spent two weeks in this mythical lodge. The result is their latest single and video “Raconteur.”
The band consists of Michelle Bensimon on lead vocals, guitar, and synth, Isabelle Banos on synth, bass, and backing vocals, and Lana Cooney on drums and backing vocals.
Since releasing their self-titled debut EP back in 2015, the group have been hard at work in creating some new hauntingly beautiful music.
Their music has been getting a lot of attention, including being featured by CBC Music and deemed a Montreal Emerging Act To Watch.
“It feels amazing,” Bensimon said about the CBC feature. “We are practically from here and happy to have that sort of recognition from a publication and radio [station] that we respect so much.”
For the 2017 Recording Festival contest, the trio submitted their track “Something Like Summer.” Their track won them a two week recording residency this at Grouse Lodge Studios near Rosemount, Ireland. where musical legends. While there, Caveboy recorded their single “Raconteur” and filmed the video for it.
“This was a song that we had written prior to going to Ireland,” Bensimon said. “So we got the chance to record it while we were there along with a bunch of other songs.”
The video for “Raconteur” was directed and filmed on the deck of the indoor pool at Grouse Lodge Studios.
“We went in there and we thought, ‘This is a really cool space,’” Bensimon said. “We had an off day in the studio, so we didn’t really have anything to do. So we kind of grabbed the crew and were like, ‘Let’s try, let’s see what we can do in here.’ And we managed to get it done in two days, so it happened really quickly.”
The music video is visually stunning with cleverly placed lighting and flashes of the band positioned around the still-water pool. The video itself is an apt reflection of the simplicity of the song—one that seduces with layers of basic melodies combined with heart-wrenching lyrics and haunting vocals.
The song itself begins with a gentle chime, a sound that drips over a soft melody which is then joined by Bensimon’s lonely vocals echoing like a siren call. When the rhythm beats to life, Bensimon calls time and time again with long held notes and compounding layers of sound falling over each other until the song reaches its lush climax.
The song quickly fades out all other sounds until the gentle chimes from the beginning are all that remain to bring the song to a close.
The trio have spent this year working on all new music that they plan to unveil at their upcoming show on Friday at O Patro Vys.
“We’re super excited. We haven’t played in Montreal in about a year, maybe a little more,” Bensimon explained. “We have all new music so we’re playing like ten, twelve new songs, and it’s going to be really exciting.”
Boldly stepping into new musical territory is something that Caveboy constantly strive for.
“With this new body of work, especially in terms of fearlessness, we took some risks that we hadn’t necessarily taken on our older stuff,” Banos said. “Before, we were just trying to cram a bunch of ideas into one song and we weren’t really taking the time to be super proud of a specific part or a specific sound.”
Banos further explained that in their new music, they feel that each song is more specific but stronger because of it.
Banos added that this was the first time they self-produced the songs.
“But we just sort of went for it and decided that we had things that we wanted to say and ways that we wanted to say it,” she said. “We hope that everyone likes the new music, but you never know so we just kind of take chances.”
As for what lies ahead for Caveboy, Banos explained that there will be a new single in a couple of weeks and more live shows this fall.
“The rest of the year is going to be very exciting,” Banos said. “Some things are secret and they will unfold very soon.”
Caveboy // Sept. 29 // $8 // O Patro Vys (356 Ave. Mont Royal E)
