MAKE STRANGE FRIENDS (TRANSLUCENT RUBY VINYL) | VINYL RECORD (LP)

Caged Animals, Caged Animals is singer-songwriter Vincent Cacchione and visual artist Magali Charron. The son of a NYC stand-up comic and a public school teacher, Vin gravitated to songwriting at a young age and became a student at the anti-folk academy at the East Village's fabled Sidewalk Café. From early solo performances to his work in the underrated noir-indie-rocker's Soft Black (with DIIV's Cole Smith), Vin's songs have maintained a cutting sincerity. Over the last decade, he has collaborated with pioneering figures in fiction podcasts like Welcome to Night Vale, The Space Within, and Hedwig creator John Cameron Mitchell, honing his craft as a storyteller and songwriter along the way. Make Strange Friends was conceived during a transitional moment in Vin and Magali's lives, after relocating to Magali's hometown in Sackville, New Brunswick. There they met low-key indie legend Jon McKiel, who as co-producer, helped Caged Animals embrace a raw, spontaneous recording approach on his Tascam 388 tape machine. The album harks to lo-fi treasures like The Basement Tapes and Mellow Gold, marrying rough-hewn, folky impressionism with a lush, post-modern palette, Make Strange Friends parses the world through it's binaries: the characters are either running away or stuck forever, totally isolated or desperately connected. The music strikes haunted chords, but the characters say funny things. Caged Animals have crafted a multifaceted album that is both a time capsule from a weird era and a tender love letter to the next chapter.