The Cave Singers — Invitation Songs

How you feel about The Cave Singers depends entirely on what you think of lead singer Pete Quirk's peculiar drawl. It's shrill, tense and doesn't have a great deal of range, but it's also so distinctive that it lifts these folk oddities above so many also-rans. It helps that guitarist Derek Fudesco (Murder City Devils, Pretty Girls Make Graves) has the experience to know what drama is and provides plenty of it in the instrumentation. "New Monuments" has all the chill of a Clinic song, while album opener "Seeds Of The Night" builds, as most of the songs do, on a simple guitar line into a choral singalong. Colin Stewart's production gives Invitation Songs the '70s atmosphere it so desperately wants/needs, making this a neat little folk rock gem. Noah Love