The EP can be something of an artform in and of itself. Step forward, Future Cavemen (aka singer-songwriter/producer Joe Tennant). Punters don’t necessarily do albums now. A single, tho, is not always enough. And sometimes four tracks can say more than any album could ever aspire to – open more doors, cover more ground, closing in on the enemy in a muddy field in the dead of night …
II’s opener Diggin is a gem of a dark Indie, Post-Rock, stompin’ banger, press-ganging all our senses to build a bridge back to the very best incarnation of Queens Of The Stone Age, like a Spaghetti Western epic with the spirit of the late, great Mark Lanegan cast as our “hero”.
Up next, Poison Flower stays with the decadent QOTSA vibe while adding more influences/ingredients/flavours to the already eclectic/electronic mix, as danceable as a very danceable Prince track and as croony as a crooner’s lament for dead lovers (“Oh little orchid listen up/ I should have told ya I’m bad luck/ You can’t drive me out of town/ And you can’t bury me in the ground”). Gypsy Curse rules with Prince once again – like the little guy, it’s a step ahead of everyone else but with one foot firmly in the past. As Curse rocks out guitar-wise it merely confirms what we already know – dark thoughts can be healthy, liberating … only doubt will truly end you (“I hold a grudge against the midnight nurse/ For the cord nearly killed me when my mother gave birth/ My Uncle Victor had a way with words/ He fell victim to the driver of a pitch-black hearse”).
Under Rainbows takes us back into Western territory, maybe an Altman or a Peckinpah – a piano player in the saloon, a card sharp slumped at the bar, a dancing girl flippy-flopped halfway up the stairs, a “ballad” in the end. It sounds like Dylan whining away and music is a wonderful thing again (RE “whining”: Dylan’s voice has already been described as the greatest instrument in American music, and I tend to agree. All us Cavemen should know the score). The final track bows out a bit Beatles-y, but that’s still good, in its own way.
In conclusion? It seems to me that Future Cavemen does everything it says on the tin – it’s like, some time in the future, it all goes wrong, with the whole world I mean, and there’s a new Stone Age, and we become (Nick?) Cavemen again, except nothing’s really changed, because we’ve always been Cavemen. There are mutants, hybrids, and some kind of weird, primal voodoo, and we listen to this music because it’s what we know already, but a bit different.
Wherever that waffling may take you, my best advice is to go right back to the (The The?) beginning. Me? I’m still Diggin – Diggin deep. Somewhere between a single and an album, where worlds collide like supernova ideas, time has no meaning and all things are possible.
II is a follow-up to previous EP I (2021). II, by Future Cavemen, is out now via Tough Candy