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Listen/purchase: Underneath The Spell by CAGED ANIMALS

I’m happy to announce that our musical family has brought two new lives to the world:  a baby boy named Casper Lou & a new Caged Animals record called Underneath The Spell which we have released today digitally as well as on limited translucent gold vinyl!

I’m so proud to share these songs with you.  They were created during a very tender moment in my life, watching our daughter Alaska bloom into a person, and sharing our creative world with her.

We wrote and recorded it in Brooklyn, in a tiny street-facing room in Bushwick, and meticulously arranged every song in a windowless warehouse with our full band.  It was started just before lockdown and completed in a backyard shed in Sackville, NB during the winter of 2021.  It features the core Caged Animals lineup with the addition of Dane Zarra on guitar, Jeff Tobias on saxophone (Sunwatchers, Modern Nature), and Jon “Catfish” DeLorme on pedal steel (Psychic Ills).  During the least band friendly moment, we somehow made our best band album.

Alaska was our spiritual advisor crouched on the grimy, concrete floor with the noise-cancelling headphones Larry “Ratso” Sloman bought her at birth. Alaska sat and colored or rattled a shaker and soaked it all in, as we honored our commitment, week after week and continued to make music.

It was scrambling from work, racing to eat, packing our instruments and getting to the space and back with enough time for Alaska to get a good night’s sleep. It was Magali singing into a mic with Alaska in a Baby Bjorn. It was Talya braving the terrifying highways of the tristate area as her driver’s anxiety waxed and waned. It was Pat taking a huge risk to build a worker-run cafe on the most expensive block in America and still keeping our hours in that room sacred.

There is something very beautiful about a band that doesn’t earn its whole living from music, continuing to make music. It’s a different kind of commitment. It’s a different kind of faith. And it’s my religion.

In light of this last year, I look back at the time where we honored that commitment and made this album with incredible gratitude.

I’ve loved music since I was a kid and I’ve never had another vision for my life beyond trying to add back some of what music has given me in my own work. I’m honored to be a part of this conversation on any level and I’m in debt to Talya, Magali, Pat, Dane, and Jeff for helping me articulate it.

Although these songs were written before the pandemic, they feel oddly tuned to our shared, strange moment, building a cinematic world out of contemplative moods and isolated characters.  From the foxhole spirituality of “The Ghost Of Jesus” to the mournful solitude of “The Coldest Place On Earth,” the album weaves its narrative on a thread of alienation and yearning; each character and melody pushing for renewal.

Thanks for your support throughout these years.  We are so happy to share this music.  If you’d like to order a copy please visit our Bandcamp.

Our new album Escape Artist is available to stream/purchase on Bandcamp!

Escape Artist

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Our new album Escape is available for purchase on Bandcamp and streaming on Spotify or wherever you stream music!

Brooklyn’s Caged Animals are an indie-pop quartet led by singer-songwriter Vincent Cacchione.  Vin emerged from his roll fronting Soft Black (where he shared the stage with DIIV’s Zachary Cole Smith) to form Caged Animals in 2011, alongside his sister Talya, partner Magali Charron, and childhood friend Patrick Curry.  

Promptly signing to London’s Lucky Number Music, Caged Animals delivered two LP’s of their noir-tinged, pop music.  Described by The New Yorker as a “hip-hop influenced Velvet Underground” and The Guardian as the perfect band to re-soundtrack Blue Velvet, Caged Animals defend the line between the timeless and cutting edge, while remaining direct, soulful, and uniquely unguarded.

On their forthcoming album, Escape Artist, Caged Animals have created a record reincarnated from a series of spiritually trying events.  On a go-for-broke US tour, the band’s van was robbed, and the only copy of the album’s original recordings vanished (along with the laptop it was recorded on).  Only days before, Vin had learned his wife was pregnant with their first child and days later he would turn 30, entering a new phase of adulthood, flat-broke, and without his band’s new music.  

Vin turned 30 onstage at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory.  Playing music in front of their friends, family, and fans, he and the rest of Caged Animals summoned the courage to prevail.  They might be on a losing streak, but they would not lose their souls in the process.  The music began and new wounds began to fuse.  At home, Cacchione got back to work with a passionate fervor.  New songs flowed and a much stronger concept began to emerge:  what do we call upon when we’re backed into a corner?  

Nine months later, Cacchione was a father twice over, and viewed his prior twist of bad luck as a blessing in disguise.  With his daughter Alaska in their railroad apartment, Vin, his wife Magali, and the rest of Caged Animals set out to record Escape Artist with as much grandeur as the home-studio could hold.  Alaska proved a faithful supporter, smiling joyously, and silently encouraging her parent’s music as it weaved it’s way to a brand new, used laptop.

Escape Artists’ 13 songs are built from these events, but draw musically from the character-driven narratives of Folk Music and the sonic exploration of contemporary Indie.  The album offers a literate, layered sound that plays like a small-screen Arcade Fire got stuck in a Bushwick bedroom with a miraculously upbeat Father John Misty.  The result is artful, adult pop music that is both vulnerable and sonically detailed.  Its frame is timeless but its exterior is colorful and modern.

Lead single “Wildflowers” has already created a stir on streaming services and its follow up “These Dark Times” is currently serving as the theme music to Webby-Award winning podcast Conversations With People Who Hate Me.

Escape Artist features the bands original lineup but benefits from the addition of avant-alto-saxophonist Chris Aiello (WFMU’s Prove It All Night), a ghostly, singing saw appearance by Julian Koster (The Orbiting Human Circus, Neutral Milk Hotel), beautiful choir direction by Andrew Hoepfner (Houseworld), and the haunting pedal steel of Jon “Catfish” DeLorme (Psychic Ills).  

On Escape Artist Caged Animals have distilled their music into it’s most focused form.  Balancing their intimate, emotional songs with a musical journey that is both exploratory and engaging.  They are grateful and humbled to share this album with you.

Our latest single “Ghost Riding” features our dear friends Julian Koster (Neutral Milk Hotel, The Orbiting Human Circus) on singing saw and Andrew Hoepfner (Creaky Boards, Houseworld, Darwin Deez) on piano!  The photograph and costume were made by my ever-talented partner, Magali Charron. <3

(Source: Spotify)

So excited to announce our new single These Dark Times is available on @Spotify !

(Source: Spotify)

Listen/purchase: These Dark Times by CAGED ANIMALS

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These Dark Times is a song I wrote after the police murder of Philando Castile.

Philando’s death hit me hard.  It drove home, in a very personal way, what it means to live in America with white privilege.  Philando was my age when he was shot by a police officer, in front of his partner and child, during what should’ve been a normal traffic stop.

Witnessing the viral Facebook video of his bloody final breaths, I was appalled by the obvious disparity between his reality and mine.  Under no circumstance could I picture an outcome like this if I were the one being pulled over.  Philando’s crime:  an alleged cracked tail-light.  Philando’s fate:  an unholy death in front of the whole world.  To make this even starker, I spent the majority of 2015/2016 driving around NYC with my wife and daughter in a car with a broken tail-light.  I was never once pulled over.  

In the days following Mr. Castile’s death I was moved and inspired by the outpouring of support from the community he had served, so I started writing a song.  What I came up with is a meditation on what it means to desire something more for yourself, to push past your prescribed boundaries, and remain hopeful in the face of overwhelming obstacles.  I channeled Philando for the lyric “I want to make it out alive from my hometown.”    

In some ways I thought this song didn’t deserve to be heard.  Maybe my voice wasn’t the right one to give these emotions expression.  I sat on it for a few months and searched my heart.  After the result’s of our presidential election I even thought about quitting music all together.  “In times as disturbing as these,” I thought, “what good am I offering the world with music?”  

Thankfully a turning point came in my way of thinking.  Instead of defeatism I became filled with a sense of urgency.  This new motivation has given me the inspiration to carry on and a renewed confidence in creating music.  

Attending The Women’s March with my wife and two-year old daughter reinforced this new outlook.  I began to believe more and more that we must remain engaged with a political struggle while also channeling our hearts and minds toward a cultural one.  I got straight to work recording my new song.

Throughout history, artists have been tasked with the responsibility of holding a mirror to society but they have also been given the privilege to shape it.  We each need to use this opportunity now, more than ever, to engage emotionally with other people.  To change hearts while we change minds.  In that spirit, and in my small way, I hope to contribute to this turning of the tides.  

Here is a song called These Dark Times.  It is delivered with hope that we will transcend this moment and it is dedicated to the memory of Philando Castile, his family members, and the millions of Americans shouting “Not My President!”

Thanks to my partner Magali Charron for providing the excellent photograph from the NYC Women’s March that graces the single’s front cover.

Our new single Night Dances is available to stream on @Spotify !

(Source: Spotify)

Listen/purchase: Wildflowers by CAGED ANIMALS


We are so excited to share the first of many new recordings with you!  

This is a song called Wildflowers.  It was written and recorded a couple months after the birth of our daughter Alaska.

Being Alaska’s dad has taught me a lot about love and responsibility but it’s also helped me re-establish the connection with what got me interested in making music in the first place.  

Watching Alaska make her own creative journey reminds me that it’s all just a different kind of play, even if it feels bloodcurdling serious.  That’s part of what inspired me to write this song.

For my favorite wildflower…

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Wildflowers

This is your proof of superpowers
My favorite wildflower
Scaling up the towers
My favorite wildflower
You were born into a kingdom
Already conquered
But I can feel you getting stronger
You’re getting stronger now

You got here on your own
And you’re free to face the sun
You got here on your own
Just like everyone

I’ve seen your pedals in the distance
My favorite wildflower
Light up in resistance
My favorite wildflower
You were raised up from a low place
But now you’re floating
High above the showcase
Constantly growing up

You got here on your own
And you’re free to face the sun
You got here on your own
Just like everyone
Wildflower
My Favorite Wildflower

Well I’ve spent time in the market
I’ve seen what they’re hawking
Roses thin and scarlet
So sad with caution
But there’s no space on the shelf dear
To lay you down on
You are free to be yourself here
Nobody owns your song

You got here on your own
And you’re free to face the sun
You got here on your own
Just like everyone
Wildflower
My Favorite Wildflower

In The Land Of Giants - LYRICS

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1) Too Much Dark

Well I’m struggling for some meaning in this quiet little room
And I’m searching for some beauty underneath all this doom

There’s too much dark and not enough light
There’s too much dark and not enough, not enough light

Well I felt your guiding hand push and pull on my head
So I took a little chance barely knowing how to dance

There’s too much dark and not enough light
There’s too much dark and not enough, not enough light

I felt so insecure, body tied to the floor
I thought that I was pure, the heart gives up when it’s mature

There is too much dark and not enough light for me
There’s too much dark and not enough, not enough light to see

I want to run to you
I want to hold you beside me
I want to see through you
I want you to see through me

Keep reading

The Overnight Coroner

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We have a new release called The Overnight Coroner.  It’s an EP which fuses together a novella I’ve written and four character songs that tie in with its plot.  The story follows a character named Ryan, a 23 year old from New Jersey, who works overnight as a guard at the city morgue.

The recording features these four songs and an audiobook of me reading the story.  It can be purchased on iTunes or physically at our Bandcamp.  You can also stream the songs and read the story over here.