Pete Quirk can tell you about the East Coast, the industrial
landscapes of Philadelphia, and surfers’ gathering places in central
New Jersey. He can also tell you about the cross-country trip he took
five years ago that brought him to Seattle, the city he now calls
home.
“I wanted to see what a city set in the woods, more or less, was
like,” he says. There, he played in a band called Hint Hint, and across
record releases and tours, befriended likeminded musicians Derek
Fudesco and Marty Lund, eventually forming the Cave Singers, whose
music represents a sharp break from anything its members had done
before.
“Before I started playing with Derek,” Quirk says, “I was doing a
lot of four-track recordings where it was three tracks of vocals and no
music. So I was really into the idea of music with vocals, or very
sparse accompaniment.” A Cave Singers song is generally stark, a
minimal and precise guitar part from Fudesco, a rhythmic pattern from
Lund, then Quirk’s expressive and controlled voice atop it all. It’s a
combination of deeply familiar elements that come together in an
unexpected way, although Quirk is quick to add, “I don’t think our
record sounds very folk.”
Their Matador Records debut, Invitation Songs, is a subtle
work that draws from influences that span continents—a theme that
doesn’t seem to be changing with their new work. “Marty has this new
drumbeat on this new song, and I feel like it sounds… like [African
pop acts] Tinariwen or Ali Farka Touré,” Quirk says. Yet as a
songwriter, Quirk’s lyrics stem from the band’s unique songwriting
method. “We play all of the music together, improvisationally, to begin
with. A lot of the lyrics are subconscious; they’ll start playing, I’ll
be playing something and Derek will start playing something, and I’ll
start to sing off the top of my head and see what comes out.” It’s a
more instinctual approach than you might expect, but it may help
explain why the work of the Cave Singers is so hard to shake.