Caveman

Caveman started in 2010 and have three full records and a great deal of road behind them, having shared stages with The War on Drugs, Jeff Tweedy and Weezer and played Coachella, Bonnaroo and Austin City Limits. By 2021 they had become one of the fixtures of the New York music world, the band everyone seems to know, the one you could always find out late if you needed company, a throughline connecting a dozen separate crowds of artists. Matthew Iwanusa leads it, a lifelong city resident, alongside guitarist Jimmy Carbonetti, who grew up on Roosevelt Island; the two started their first band together in high school and met bassist Jeff Berrall at eighteen to complete the trio. Jimmy's Brooklyn store, The Guitar Shop NYC, is a city institution and doubles as the band's clubhouse, and they practise and work out of the Williamsburg nightclub Baby's Alright during its off hours. After a stretch of false starts, legal trouble and delays that held up their new record for several years, they are beginning to rebuild the momentum of their early days. "Smash" is the first Caveman record since 2016's "Otero War," produced by Nico Chiotellis at Rivington 66.