Cavetown, the moniker of UK-born artist Robin Skinner, has released his new album Running With Scissors, marking a defining moment in his career.
An emotionally expansive body of work, the album captures the disorienting threshold between youth and adulthood, braided together sonically through hyper-pop, heavy guitars, and his signature dream-pop sounds.
It has been released today via Futures Music Group/Virgin Music Group, alongside the lead single and music video for “Cryptid”. A song and short film, “Cryptid” explores Skinner’s experience as a transgender person at a moment when trans rights, safety, and even visibility are being threatened.
In the video, “cryptids” live underground, hidden away by a world that fears and misunderstands them, until they finally emerge to challenge the narratives imposed upon them. While it centres the trans experience and incorporates trans symbolism throughout, Skinner’s intention is broader: to hold up a mirror to how society has historically recast many communities, Black, queer, immigrant, disabled, and others, as “other”.
“In allowing myself to love,” Skinner said of the track, “I’ve also allowed myself to feel anger about things I would usually ignore. I hope this feels empowering for people to sing back.”
He told Rolling Stone AU/NZ that the whole album is something he’s “very, very proud about” – not just the songs, but the process of it.
“I really pushed myself to be brave and try new things and welcome new people into my creative process,” he said. “And I feel like that comes across in the music, it went through multiple brains before being in its final form. I was really able to let my imagination just like go crazy with this album and let the songs kind of ebb and flow in different directions and take unexpected twists and turns.”
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Each song on Running With Scissors, he said, is very sure about what it is, and what it is trying to say.
“And I feel like that’s a difficult line to balance,” he explained. “But I feel really proud that I about the way that I did balance it. I achieved what I set out to achieve. I don’t know how else to sell it, but I’m very excited people to just hear the creative risks that I’ve taken and the brave ways that I’ve taken my art up another level for this album.”
Cavetown will soon head Down Under for Laneway, marking his Australian festival debut. He’s also playing his own headline shows in Sydney and Melbourne – see here for details.
Cavetown’s Running With Scissors is out now. Keep an eye on Rolling Stone AU/NZ for the full interview next month.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source au.rollingstone.com ’
