Singer, songwriter & producer Cavetown (Robin Skinner)’s vibrant storytelling and authenticity has been connecting with listeners for the better part of a decade, and has created one of the most dedicated communities of fans worldwide.

Originating as a bedroom pop beacon, Cavetown has taken listeners alongside his journey of growing into himself, both personally and artistically.

Through his music and live performances, he has created a safe space for queer youth, leading to the creation of his organization This Is Home which fundraises and supports LGBTQ+ youth. With an already extensive discography, his upcoming album marks the beginning of a new era of his artistry.

Cavetown’s upcoming record Running With Scissors, out tomorrow, showcases his musicality in a new light. With striking guitar riffs and powerful vocals, Running With Scissors is still the same Cavetown that audiences know and love, but reimagined in a more mature, elevated way. The album marks the first time Cavetown invited others into his creative process, working closely with others in the studio to elevate his vision to the next level. Exploring themes of both childhood and adulthood, and how they intertwine, Running With Scissors is Cavetown looking in the rearview mirror, and learning how to move forward while embracing the past.

Ahead of the release of Running With Scissors, Cavetown sits down with 1883 Magazine to talk about the record.

How are you feeling about the response and reception to the new era so far ahead of album’s release?

I’m feeling really excited about it. I think usually when I release new music… my main purpose for writing music is ultimately for myself, and usually I’m like: it’s done its job for me, and I push it out into the world. I’m a little scared to take in the response right immediately, I just want to focus on the fact that it helped me, and you know, bask in the glow of that a little bit. But I do show my music to my friends and family, and I’ve been especially trying to do so with this new music because I’m so proud of it. I’m so excited about it. So I haven’t been paying a great amount of attention to how it’s being received in public so far, aside from the in stores that I’ve done, that’s been my first time exposing myself to the reaction.

People are really excited, and I’ve gotten to see some fans who I’ve seen at like every single LA show I’ve done, and I took some time to talk to them, and they were beaming about how excited they are about the new music, and it just made me feel great that people could stick with me for so long through different phases of growth, and especially for them to see… I feel like I’ve reached a peak with this album. I’ve showed it mostly to my friends and family, and hearing the response from them… they’ve always been complimentary of my music and very supportive, but with this album, they’re like, “this is another level, this is different.”

It means so much more when it comes from people that I know well. So yeah, in general, I’m really excited about the opinions of people that I care a lot about, and the opinions of fans that I’ve seen who have been with me for nearly a decade at this point. It’s really cool to be able to still hang onto those people, and to grow together.

That’s really cool to be on parallel journeys with your listeners, and be able to connect with them in that way. Your single ‘NPC’ is sort of a reimagination of a childhood imaginary friend & how it manifests in your current travel heavy lifestyle, could you share a bit about the track?

Yeah, I was inspired to write about my imaginary friend I had called Mr. Nobody. I had a bunch of imaginary friends because I was an only child, so I needed to hang out with somebody. Mr. Nobody’s whole thing was that he was never there, he was always away on a business trip. In my mind, he was like a void figure with a briefcase. He was always on a business trip. So I never really met him, which I’m still confused by. But yeah, I feel like I was thinking about my childhood imaginary friends and I was like, that’s kind of my life now. I’m always up in the air, I’m always moving on to a different place. I’ve realized that I find it really hard. I find feeling ungrounded really difficult.

I struggle with transitions, and I struggle with settling into one place. When you’re moving every single day, it’s definitely very challenging. I’ve gotten used to it in some ways, but kind of connecting that bad feeling with a friend I made for myself who has been in my life longer than any of my friends today, felt kind of sweet to me. I like reminding myself that I’m the same person. I’ve had so many phases of life. Often it feels like it’s all different people, but when I can tether myself to something like that, it’s really comforting that I’m making this journey through life in the same body, and I’ve been here for myself the whole time.

The song is basically about trying to seek that connection with myself through my different phases of life, and also just talking about what it feels like to feel ungrounded on tour. I think sometimes it makes me kind of disassociate a little bit from the world, which makes me feel like I’m a Sim that somebody’s controlling from the computer. I thought the whole NPC metaphor was kind of funny, I love all those videos where people pretend to be an NPC, walking through chairs or trying to walk into a wall. I was like that could be some fun content.

Yeah, I feel like a big theme on this record is the idea of everything being full circle, especially in the sense of growing up. Being on the road as often as you are, do you have any routines or things that you do to make yourself feel a bit more grounded when you start to feel ungrounded?

I struggle with feeling ungrounded and I also struggle with finding a routine, so it’s kind of a self-eating snake for me. I think I’m able to feel grounded, I try to attach my feeling of home and safety to the people I’m with. I’m so lucky to have such an amazing crew, amazing band. They’re some of the best friends I’ve ever had. I feel at home in my community that I have on the road, that helps. But yeah, I think it’s something I’ve had to grow a thick skin for, in a way. I do like to bring a stuffed animal from my home. I have the shark from IKEA that I spoon every night. He has to take up half of my suitcase when I go on tour.

So there’s a few things like that. I try to vibe out my bunk area on the bus, get a little wall plug in, like a nightlight or some nice smells. I find nice smells really therapeutic. I try really hard to make the bus a really homey place. Like, I’ve never been on a bus that has good lighting upon arrival. Something must be done as soon as I arrive, I need to go to the craft store, get tape and make all of the lights vibey. It’s all just those big, down lights. Usually white lights. I try to make our environment cozy, and that helps a lot.

I wanted to ask about the phrase ‘running with scissors,’ because it’s a bit of a motif on the album. Obviously the title of the record, but also the closing track as well. I was curious if you could share a bit about the phrase and what it means to you?

The album was really named after that track. I wrote the track first, and I feel like that song kind of encapsulated the whole theme of the album for me. Attaching something I learned as a child to the way I’m approaching life today, and the things that I’ve learned as I’ve grown up. In the past couple years, my family has gone through some changes, and I’ve learned a lot about some things in the past, and I’ve learned a lot about my parents, and parts of them that I’ve picked up. I’ve been learning to have empathy for those parts.

I think the phrase ‘running with scissors’ reminds me of the basic safety rule that everyone is taught as a kid: don’t run with sharp objects, you’re going to fall over and hurt yourself. That specifically feels relevant to me, because for a little bit I didn’t have the reflexes to put my hands out in front of me when I fell. I would just fall directly on my face. I guess at that moment, I couldn’t trust my body to save me once I fell down. I feel like the whole ‘running with scissors’ rule is like, you can’t trust yourself to fall and not get hurt. But sometimes you need to get somewhere fast, and you need to take a risk. You need to put yourself in a dangerous position in order to grow and in order to learn.

And in order to get yourself where you need to be. I think I’ve done a lot of protecting myself from things that could hurt me without giving myself the chance to grow from those things. I’ve been trying to, instead of avoiding running with scissors, I’ve been trying to learn how to trust myself to fall safely with them, or to patch myself up if I do get hurt on the way down. I’ve been comparing it to my mom, it’s her first time owning a house. As of like, two or three years ago. But she’s still scared to drill holes in the walls because she’s never been allowed to. I keep telling her, as long as you know how to patch a hole, the anxiety goes away. You don’t feel scared to make a mistake anymore, when you trust yourself to fix it. I think that’s kind of what the whole album means to me.

This lesson I’ve been trying to internalize. I think a lot of my music has been about the transition from being a child to a teenager, or a teenager to adult, and I think we learn a lot of the same lessons over and over again. We just learn a new thing from them, or interpret them differently. I guess this is the way I’m reinterpreting ‘running with scissors.’ I also think it’s a cool string of words, a cool title. Evokes cool imagery, which feels like a direction I want to go in, aesthetically.

I feel like the title really captures that, yeah. It’s one thing to trust yourself enough to take risks, and another thing to trust yourself to fix what happens if it goes wrong. This album, as you’ve mentioned, is sort of your magnum opus. How did the creative process for this record differ from your past projects?

It’s been a strength of mine that I can basically make music by myself. That’s been the process, and I’ve never wanted to hand that off to someone else. That’s really great and useful when you want to pump out songs, but it’s also quite lonely, and I think I pigeonholed myself into that kind of solo music making. I realized I was stubborn about my ideas, and them all coming from me, and wanting it to all be my creation otherwise I felt like I couldn’t really claim it and be proud of it. I also had this complex that I was hard to work with, because as a teenager I tried to start bands with my friends and I would always get angry at them because [I thought] my idea was the best one.

So I just decided I didn’t work well with other artists. I’d given writing sessions and producing sessions a try in the past, and it just never felt right, and it wasn’t fun. I never walked away with something I wanted to use. I think I realized how lonely the experience was, and I wanted to challenge my feelings about cowriting and working with other producers, kind of lose the ego about it. I just wanted to give it a try, and I tried to do it in a slightly different way. Usually there’s an artist seat, and a producer seat, and those are the two roles. I felt like I would miss the producer seat if I was ever not in it. We did more of a co-production thing, which I guess is kind of a weird format, because my manager was like, I don’t really know how to deal with this, split wise, but we’ll figure it out.

So I’ve met people who are willing to do things differently, and to share control, and I found it just felt good to feel someone else’s excitement for the music. I started the process in a bad headspace where I was feeling low confidence about being able to make anything with the sessions. I guess I was just nervous. It never really worked before. The first guy I went into the studio with was just amazing, and immediately was like, ‘that idea is great, I love the way your brain works.’ Just made me feel so good about it. So anytime I might’ve gotten stuck on my own or frustrated with myself, I had someone there to push me through it. I learned from them, I learned skills I could take into making songs by myself.

Most of the album I still made by myself, I just learned a lot from these other producers and it felt good to realize they were learning things from me too, that’s not really something I considered would happen. It just really changed my perspective on sharing the experience, and it’s also just fun. When you find someone you really mesh with, it’s just fun to have those moments where you pick the perfect sound and you both get excited together.

Or you both come up with the same idea at the same time and you look at each other like, what do you think of doing this? It’s just really cool and fun. I feel like it made the album so much more diverse and so much more ambitious sonically and thematically. I felt encouraged to explore my creativity. I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

Opening up your creative process to others’ involvement can be so vulnerable, so that’s really awesome that it clicked so well. Do you think you’ll work collaboratively on future projects as well?

Yeah, I think so. For a long time I’ve been wanting to expand the range of instruments in my music, too. There’s a lot of stuff I can’t play. It’s always interesting to hear what somebody else’s brain hears that should come next. We’re in rehearsals right now for all of this new material, and I’m not a drummer, and I’ve written these insane drum parts that are just physically impossible to play. And my drummer is just somehow able to make them work amazingly. It’s also a bit like, how do you, as a drummer, interpret this section?

It’s interesting to take inspiration from other people’s talents in that way. I also feel like I’ve accumulated a small group of producers that I know I can go into a session with and not feel the pressure of like, we have to leave the session with a smash hit. I’m really glad I finally found that, because that’s something I was looking for for a long time. I was also looking for a good mixer for a long time, and this is the first album that’s been mixed by someone else.

My mixer for this album used to be my drummer, so she really understands the music and understands my vision, and it just sounds better than it’s ever sounded. I think hitting that extra set of ears is really beneficial for the final product. It makes me feel more secure in it that it’s been through so many people, and everyone has agreed this sounds great.

I think that’s why I get so anxious on my own, because I just have myself to trust. I’m definitely going to lean more collaborative moving forward.

We’re a couple days away from the benefit concert for your organization, This Is Home. Could you share a bit about the role of activism and fundraising in your career?

Yeah, I think it’s something that has been a part of my touring career for as long as I’ve been touring, pretty much. I have a really wonderful team who prioritizes those things, because they see me as a queer person, they see my community coming to these shows and finding it to be a safe space, and a place where they can still call home. I’ve only ever seen that more and more over the years and more people accumulate around my music, and I see the amazing community.

At a certain point, my shows got so big that it needed to become more than just donating a dollar from every ticket to a charity of our choice. It also is really important to me to make my audience feel that I’m there with them. I feel like sometimes a queer artist can be really inspiring and really feel like a part of the community, and as they get bigger and bigger, they kind of drift further away. It feels like they get maybe further away from the normal queer experience.

I just want my audience to always feel that I’m there for them and, you know, this is my community as well. I just feel that the bigger it gets, the bigger that my efforts need to get. It’s been really rewarding, too, to be able to help. I feel really honored to be in a position where I can reach so many people, and to have the money to help support people’s journeys. [Being] at my own shows, I see myself in the audience and I remember what it’s like to be in the midst of that process, and it’s only gotten harder.

I know how it feels, how it would have felt for me at that age, for someone that I looked up to, to be like: I see you. To even be like, I’ll pay for your top surgery. It would’ve just been absolutely life changing. I never really grew up around my own community, so I think it took me a while to allow myself to be part of it. But I feel that my community has really welcomed me and made me feel at home in the same way that I guess I have done.

It’s another full circle moment. It took me a while to… I feel like I felt a lot of pressure, and I think a lot of queer people can feel pressure to be like, you can’t say anything unless you’re actually going to do something about it. And I think I’ve realized it’s okay to just exist, and I think that’s inspiring enough.

That is really rewarding, to build a community with your music and prioritize being an active participant in it. To wrap up, which track off this upcoming album are you most looking forward to playing live?

Definitely ‘Cryptid’ It’s really cool. Spoiler alert, we have a sick metal breakdown in it, and we’ve been practicing it, and it’s just absolutely demonic. I’m really excited for everyone to experience it.

Running With Scissors is out tomorrow.

Interview Brigid Young

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