Cabin--- Louisville Hasn't Sounded This Good Since The Louisville Orchestra

Back in 2005, a little known band from Florida (though I believe they lived in NYC at the time) calling themselves OAMI released an album (Day In the City) which swept me away with their vision of music--- a conglomeration of rock with beautiful but rarely used chord progressions and always a tinge of jazz (or maybe the unknown).  A few years later, 2009 to be exact, Fisher released Water, another unique adventure into the harmonious side of the aural.  And then, a few weeks ago, I happened upon a band from Louisville which brought elements of both bands to their music without probably not having heard either.  In fact, the first track from Cabin I heard melded the sounds so completely that I felt a tingle run up my spine.  I knew the band had not heard either of the previously mentioned groups but I could not put the similarities behind me.  Eerie?  A little, but more like mysterious.  How, I asked myself, do musicians so separated in time and space sound so similar on certain tracks?  Especially when the sounds are not part of the mainstream of whatever genre they play?  I don't know but they do, and they do so in spades with OAMI, Fisher, and Cabin.  And, no, you won't hear it right off.  Listen a few times and you begin to hear it, though--- the subtle touches which make a band more than just another band. 

Take, for instance, Cabin's It Is What It Looks Like, which does not borrow heavily but has the virtual same aura as Fisher's Water Burial in the beginning before morphing into an OAMI-like riff.  I don't know.  Perhaps that is the only song that gives me this overwhelming feel that the bands are similar, but I can't lose it.  The Oceanographer, another Cabin track from the album It Is What It Looks Like, continues my belief that OAMI lives under the skin, save for the killer violin solo break which is as good as it gets.

Maybe I want the bands to be similar because I love these bands and want something to grasp as a unifying writing idea.  A way to get people to listen to all three.  A way to pass long this music which is not receiving its fair due.  I don't know.  I just know I like it enough to write about it, and I don't write about music I don't like.

I like Cabin because the musicianship is above the norm, the songs are on the fringe and there is a cohesiveness to the music sadly lacking in a lot of albums these days.  I remember a buddy back in the old days calling albums like this "smo-o-oth."  I mean, everyone is on the same page.  Everyone plays a part.  But the whole....  the whole.....  It's, um, smo-o-oth.

Lucky for you, you don't have to take my word for it.  You can actually (and I mean actually) hear the band--- on the Net, if not live.  Check the tunes out below, and be sure to watch the "Five Days With" video.  Call it 'meet the band.'  It impressed me enough to make me listen closer.

A bonus!  Here is a track from an earlier album.  Man, these guys freak me out, they're so good. Makes me wonder what the hell is wrong with the rest of the world.

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Frank O. Gutch Jr.

(Frank Gutch Jr. writes and has written for numerous magazines and websites, presently including this blog, his own website and the prestigious Don't Believe A Word I Say site put together by musician and music pundit Bob Segarini, out of Toronto. He specializes in the Indies, having fought hand-to-hand combat with major record labels for decades (talk about zombies). He believes music should be the core of the music business, though business it mostly be, and denies the accepted reality in the stead of the artistic one. Seldom does he receive pay for articles and/or reviews and believes that there is no place for negatives in a world in which one cannot keep up with the positives. He is, in a sense, a lost soul in a sea of music, drowning, but drowning gratefully.)