Cavetown is the moniker of UK-born artist Robin Skinner. Their latest album Running with Scissors is a striking mix of electro beats and yearning lyrics.
Written after an intensive two-year healing process, Running With Scissors is shaped by two profound life shifts: falling in love with the person Skinner wants to build a future with, and the birth of his first sibling, 26 years his junior, which prompted a deep reckoning with family history, masculinity and responsibility.
Skinner shares that opener Skip is the first track they’ve written with “genuinely positive overtones”. This buoyant love song perfectly encapsulates loving from a place of safety. However, this gentle opening number then runs straight into angry track Cryptid, an abrupt change in the emotion of the album. I didn’t like this, it didn’t feel like it fitted at all and it violently shook me out of the warm and fluffy place of track one. But I think that’s the intention. It’s seeking to make you uncomfortable and show those darker feelings that can still be there despite being incredibly happy and comfortable in other facets of your life. Or even perhaps feeling safe to experience them knowing you’re loved and cared for. And I think I’m feeling exactly how Skinner intended. This isn’t a creative mistake of slotting in something that doesn’t fit but a deliberate emotional shift seeking to impress upon the listener some of the discomfort and complex emotions he processes in day to day life.
Beyond this the album does settle into a more consistent sound. And while there are still variations – the heavier techno-esque beat on hyper pop Straight through my head (DO IT!!!) or the almost lullaby vibes of Baby Spoon – the mood ebbs and flows more subtly. Rainbow Gal is probably one of my favourite songs, it’s as if a 90s computer game made a single and I found the interplay between the 8 bit influenced beat and the vocals particularly well balanced on this number. I think it most perfectly encapsulates Cavetown’s brand of dream pop.
Running with Scissors is ultimately an incredibly personal album. It’s an emotionally rich and complex narrative, and it’s one that requires active listening. It’s not an easy, throw on in the background record, and it’s not one you’ll always identify with, but what shines through is the intent. Even if you don’t understand where the feelings in a particular track come from, you can recognise that they’re supposed to be there. Cavetown has carefully crafted this to be a truly representational part of their experience, nothing in this collection is there by accident.
Released today alongside the album is the lead single and music video for Cryptid, a song and short film that explores Skinner’s experience as a transgender person at a moment when trans rights, safety, and even visibility are being threatened. In the video, “cryptids” live underground, hidden away by a world that fears and misunderstands them, until they finally emerge to challenge the narratives imposed upon them. While the video centers the trans experience and incorporates trans symbolism throughout, Skinner’s intention is broader: to hold up a mirror to how society has historically recast many communities, black, queer, immigrant, disabled, and others, as “other. “In allowing myself to love,” Skinner says, “I’ve also allowed myself to feel anger about things I would usually ignore. I hope this feels empowering for people to sing back.”
Cavetown is appearing at upcoming Laneway festival and side shows:
Listen to Running With Scissors here.