Saturday, September 17, 2016

Caveman Woodman & Bam Bam Moss - Early Man

Produced by Adam Cox
Photo by Lo-fi Bri
Design by TJ Ghoul
Jett Plastic Recordings 

Detroit's Caveman & Bam Bam might be pegged as a punk duo or a garage duo. They'll be categorized as noisy and maybe just a bit frightful. Because their songs are played and performed as though the entire venue was earth-quaking down to the ground around them and they have just two minutes to bang it out before roof caves in. But their sound is also one that certainly assures you, in its spirit and in its manner, that would that roof come tumbling down, these two...would...not....flinch.

So you can grunt if you wanna... The mayhem is metaphoric, mostly... The fracas is figurative. You won't "Start A Fire," per se, but if you wanna lose your mind for 3 minutes, that's kinda part of the plan.

Caveman & Bam Bam aim to bring out an inner animal nature in you, and push you, cannonballing, into the crude primordial stew of rock 'n' roll. It's not as though you'd literally "Start A Fire..." but the agenda of freeing you up to brew some of that recklessness outta ya for some healthful rocking-out...is there.

Look at the song titles on their forthcoming album, Early Man (via Jett Plastic Recordings):
*"What Would A Caveman Do?" The question invites you to unleash something. These are the grunts, the roars, the club-swing-smashes and fire-starting fervor you can't let out of you at your day-job.
**"Let's Start A Fire..." That's a charming, thematic sentiment of inventing a contained heat-source, but when fire spreads, it's wild.
***"Starting A Dance Craze..." My personal favorite: taut, taunty lyrics, angular guitars, feedback storm and tribal drumming; it assures you, in all its ferocity, that you don't have to have your hipster posture, you don't have to worry about sweating through your shirt, this is a communal commotion and you just have to make sure your flailed arms don't spill the drinks of your dancefloor neighbors.

Sayeth the Caveman, himself: The record was all done here in Hamtramck. Written, recorded, mixed, mastered. (Producer) Adam Cox has Hamtramck Sound Studios just two blocks away from my house; he’d worked with King Tuff and Timmy’s Organism. (Moss) and I went in there and bashed out 11 songs. The songs are quick and spiky. There’s some psych-rock influence coming in, for sure, and a track that we made instrumental that wound up kind of surfy. I wrote (Moss) an anthem, “Bam Bam Can...” but I've still got to figure out how to pull off that lick off, live.

Photo by Brian Rozman


The evolved versions of a couple of the songs featured on Caveman & Bam Bam's Bellyache Records debut. The Early Man version of "Dance Craze" is more dynamic and drawn out for a minute-or-so in duration, demonstrating the notable kindred-spirit chemistry that guitarist/singer Frank Woodman and drummer Brandon Moss have cultivated over their three-year-run, particularly in their improvisational surf-rock-psychotic-storm style of jamming out a bit of cathartic, riffy noise.

I also dig "Gotta Do Something," it's a wavier, groovier musical bedrock that provides a fine tide for some of the most manic of vocals. But I love the positive sentiment of this song, as well as nearly all of these 11 songs. The album will be out in early/mid October, (maybe sooner...)

Meanwhile, Caveman is traveling to New York to perform at Otto's Sunken Head, opening up for Moss' other band, Bear Vs Shark. More info. 
http://www.jettplasticrecordings.com/ 

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