Cafeine – New Love

Cafeine
New Love
Independent
★★

Montreal’s Xavier Cafeine is a punk at heart. A love affair collecting music by the West Coast scenery. Thoughts of X, The Gun Club, and The Weirdos dance around in his head, serving as influential standards to live by. Whether he really takes these influences into his album New Love, it’s up for question.

There is a lot of directness and grandiosity to this album similar to the punk artery of the West Coast, but there is also a degree of humbleness you would find on a Vampire Weekend album and the concoction can end up a little strange. You think “Fucking Time” would be a finger shoved in the face of the listener, but it’s more of a diatribe against something that cannot be controlled, which feels to me like he is spinning his wheels, unless that song was specifically directed and send to the person he was writing it for. I guess you thought this song was about you? Who knows.

Cafeine – New Love

I would not say this is a bad album, there are great things going on here. After all the guy is from Canada and not Los Angeles so the above really does not matter too much. But what I can tell from the songs is that they are not explored enough. Cafeine can dig deeper into his emotions and tap into the corners of each level of mood which makes those mid-points feel that much more of a mystery.

He does so in “Love Is A Riot.” It’s this song where you really feel the gain of what Cafeine is trying to do. An afterthought to “I Love You,” this post punk venture feels very up front yet “Left For Dead” presents a duality, the music that he loved and the plane that the song lies on. Pop exploitation meets higher education student rebellion. It’s a protest to the environment that got us here in the first place.

I am really curious what Cafeine will do next and where he will go with his talent because he is on that upward climb to something really great.