Thursday, October 02, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Music: Let's move on

Cave In founder defends new sound

By Newt Briggs

It's inevitable: Every band makes a bad album (or, at the very least, one that doesn't live up to public expectation). Take the Stones, for example. After releasing a triumvirate of bona fide rock 'n' roll classics--Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street--the so-called "Glimmer Twins" Mick and Keith followed up with Goats Head Soup--an album that prompted critic extraordinaire Lester Bangs to opine that the Stones were nothing but "disintegrating shards of past glory."

By comparison, Cave In's latest album, Antenna, isn't nearly so bad--nor is it as bad as R.E.M.'s Monster, Public Enemy's Muse Sick-N-Hour Message or Eric Clapton's There's One in Every Crowd (featuring a reggae version of "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot"). In fact, as evidenced by Cave In's voluminous press kit, Antenna has even garnered its fair share of supporters--among them, music Svengalis Stuff and Playboy.

Despite this deluge of praise, it seems like Cave In's core fans have been jumping off the wagon like drunks at a wine tasting. For proof, look no further than the "Budget Punk" section inside Big B's CDs & Records on Maryland Parkway. There you'll find 17 copies of Antenna--more than any other album in the store--all of them selling for less than $5 a piece.

Now, we could speculate ourselves silly about the origins of this apparent backlash against the Boston-based indie-metal band. For instance, we might observe that Cave In's stylistic transformation happens to coincide with the band's major-label debut for RCA. We might further suggest that this process--what some longtime fans have dubbed "selling out"--began with Cave In's last full-length release, Jupiter. But wanting to be fair and balanced in our assessment of Antenna, we took the issue directly to the source, Cave In founder and frontman Stephen Brodsky.

Mercury: What kind of response are you getting from your fans with regard to the new album?

Brodsky: It's been pretty mixed so far. It doesn't seem to be everybody's favorite record, but I think it's made us some new fans, which is always kinda nice, you know? And with that being said, I feel like what we have to offer in the future might be a little bit better received by all of our fans.

M: So, do I get the hint that you sort of regret some decisions you made on Antenna?

B: Well, there's no big regret. It's just that, in hindsight, I don't think any of us feel like it matches up in term of originality and spontaneity with our other records.

M: Do you think it's possible that some of your fans might have bought Antenna expecting that it was going to have more of a heavy metal sound and been disappointed to find that it skews towards emo?

B: I don't think it sounds emo. When I was younger, emo records always had lots of screaming--to the point where the screaming was sometimes ear-piercing, almost as if you were using a bad needle on your record player. And the snare sound was often more horrible than anything. I don't think either of those things is consistent with what Antenna sounds like.

M: But you would agree that there are songs on Antenna--like, say, "Seafrost" or "Inspire"--that you never would have heard on [1999's] Until Your Heart Stops.

B: That's very true.

M: So what inspired this radical change in style?

B: Oh, come on, man! Ask me something new, will you?

M: Why? Do you feel like everyone asks you that?

B: Have you ever read a Cave In interview before? They're just such stock questions. Let's move on.

And move on we did--to the well-trod interview territory of influences, life on the road and chicks. Unfortunately, none of it proved nearly as fertile as queries regarding Cave In's changing style--a topic that obviously irks Brodsky too much for discussion. But if it's any consolation, Antenna has become the first Cave In album to chart on the Billboard 200. And I certainly wouldn't go so far as to call Cave In "disintegrating shards of past glory." At least not yet, anyway.