Photo by Gina Tomaine

At the start of 2020 Dave Tomaine was feeling good about the future of his band Cave People. As the sole constant member of the revolving Philadelphia group, he was on a roll after an eventful early winter tour across the midwest… and then a global pandemic hit. In lieu of what he claims would have been an ill-fated trip to Austin for SXSW, Tomaine gathered up friends from bands like Rozwell Kid, Three Man Canon, and Cherry and decamped to a small cabin in the Poconos for a week to piece together what became Looking, their latest LP. Owing in part to the loose but absorbed atmosphere surrounding its recording – “all we did was eat bagels and play music” – Looking is easily Cave People’s most introspective and most collaborative release yet. It’s also the best they’ve sounded thus far. Centered around a desire to stop cutting himself so much slack, Tomaine says the record is about “looking at circumstances and habits in my life where I was causing problems and assessing how to improve myself from there.” 

Its twelve songs follow a nebulous but hopeful arc towards personal redemption. One that gracefully embraces the power of improving the mundane without delving fully into a caricature of radical positivity. It’s also an undoubtedly strong collection of what “indie rock” sounds like in the year 2020. With spiritual guidance from your typical ‘90s touchstones as well as vocal encouragement from fellow Philly contemporaries (including those who play on the record), Looking has the feel of a survey of what’s beloved in guitar music for the Bandcamp set right now. What holds it together, and ultimately what sets it apart from the multitude of other records in a similar mold is Tomaine’s lack of pretension. 

That it’s coming out on Boston’s Disposable America makes perfect sense, as Tomaine says they “share a similar kind of dynamic both musically and socially.” We got a chance to speak with him about the recording, as well as the meaning and feeling behind each song on the record. 

Are You Looking

Like many of these songs, “Are You Looking” started out as a quiet little acoustic thing, and we recorded it that way for an EP called Salt. Looking as a whole is the most collaborative record we’ve done, so it felt right to start with a song that’s just me in the beginning. Everyone else shows up one by one and then sticks around to make the ending big and loud, but hopefully without losing the intimacy. It’s a snapshot of the project as a whole, something that starts small but gets bigger and more dynamic because of the people who are a part of it.

Bed

“Bed” is about casual sex, which can be great but at times can also at times be unfulfilling. More broadly it’s about ways we invite people into our lives/living with the results of that. I don’t want to say consequences, because it’s not always bad, but there’s a responsibility with inviting someone else into the complications of your life, and that’s something you both have to deal with. Besides “Are You Looking” which we’ve been playing a bit, I feel like “Bed” was the first song to really come together when we started figuring this record out. The Mimi (Gallagher) part at the end is sick!

Guilt

I remember having the first few lines of “Guilt” bouncing around my head when we toured with Sir Babygirl and Petal. We did a midwestern run (in January!) and it was so cold and snowy. I was driving the van one day kind of humming the beginnings of this song to myself but I didn’t actually write it until a bit later. I know for sure that I lifted the third line from an X-Men comic.

Nail

“Nail” is about negative patterns and routines that we keep up because they’re comfortable even if they make us unhappy. You can come to seek out that kind of unhappiness just because it’s familiar and routine. It’s sort of dancing around the idea that you need to suffer to be a good person, which is pretty dumb!

Photo by Gina Tomaine

Place

“Place” is about putting yourself in places where you shouldn’t be and paying the price for that. It’s the oldest song on the record. I think I wrote it around the time our first LP Sinning Tree came out. It’s been kicking around since then, and when we were putting together the songs for this record I thought it would fit. It almost did not make it! Russell made me keep it on there.

Nothing At All

Some songs take a while to write but most of “Nothing At All” was written in about 20 minutes at Russell’s house while no one was home. I went there to pick something up and his roommate Matt (lowercase roses, new record out now) had an acoustic guitar out. I picked it up to fool around because, “hey, what the hell else am I going to do as a 30 year old white guy?” Anyway, “Nothing At All” came out of that, and then Kian (Sorouri) did that really long solo at the end and it’s pretty sick!

Album Art by Russell Edling

Looking

Side B starts with the title track “Looking” a song that tries to sum up where we’ve been so far. It’s about putting yourself in situations that make you feel bad, but also becoming reliant on them in your day to day. It’s about finding yourself back in a familiar place that you had thought you left and trying to climb out again.

Room

“Room” tries to be a breath of fresh air. It’s about being realistic, and seeing that a situation is bad, but knowing that the situation won’t last forever. The world isn’t ending. Out of all these songs I think it’s the closest to the ones we did on Kingfisher. I do a lot of “ooooooOOOOooooo” at the end and I love doing that. Eventually I’ll release a record that is only oooo’s. I’ll call it Ooze.

Name

“Name” is about trying to get your head on straight personally while trying to find ways to help in a world that seems to be getting progressively worse. I don’t think it comes to any real conclusions on that (and I mean I thought things were bad a year ago when I wrote it!) besides trying to remove the things in your life that offer you love and care transactionally. 

Wing

Lyrically this is probably my favorite on the album? I’m also a sucker for sad songs, which I’m sure comes as a shock to you, dear reader. The main vocal and guitar track for this were recorded at the same time and we ended up using the first take, flubs and all. There’s an old out of tune piano in the house next to the place where we recorded, so we recorded the keys part as a voice memo in my phone and emailed it to the computer in the studio.

Rose Whip

This song is (almost unapologetically) deeply referential to my favorite character from this manga/anime called Yu Yu Hakusho. It’s about the things that look or feel nice actually doing you harm, and trying to decide to not let yourself be hurt anymore. It’s about knowing what you want, making a decision, choosing a side. I remember sitting with Spenser (Hogans) while someone else was tracking on this, and the “I wonder if I’m pretending” line kept playing over and over again. Spenser turned to me with this sly little grin and asked “well are you?” and I sort of freaked out internally for a moment. The character’s name is Kurama. Worth a Google search if you feel so inclined!

Strong

Right before I wrote this song I saw IT Chapter One in theaters and honestly I loved it. It felt more like fantasy than horror and that’s certainly up my alley. This song has almost nothing to do with IT except in the second verse I talk about being haunted by something creeping in with open jaws, and I’m pretty sure that was inspired by being really hype on IT at the time. Sean (Hallock) likes the book, IT, a lot and is responsible for the really lovely drums on this song and the whole album.

Looking is out Friday, August 28th on Boston’s Disposable America and Stereophonodon Records. You can download the album or order a tape via Bandcamp, with all proceeds going to Black Lives Matter.