Cavetown has released new single ‘Big Strong Man’, with Robin Skinner looking back at adolescence and the uncomfortable expectations of masculinity that accompanied it.
Stream it HERE.
Written from a similar period in Skinner’s life to fan favourite ‘Boys Will Be Bugs’, the track examines what it means to be loved while feeling that the person receiving that affection isn’t entirely you. It is a particularly complicated form of alienation: fitting comfortably enough into somebody else’s idea of who you should be while privately knowing the shape is wrong.
It is territory that feels particularly suited to Cavetown. Across more than a decade, Skinner has built a catalogue around emotional details that can appear small on the surface but carry considerably more weight underneath. Songs including ‘Boys Will Be Bugs’, ‘Devil Town’, ‘Home’ and ‘Juliet’ have helped create a devoted global audience, particularly among young LGBTQ+ listeners who have found pieces of their own experiences within his writing.
Backseat Mafia caught Cavetown in Australia earlier this year, first at Laneway Festival and again at a Sydney headline show, where the scale of the connection between Skinner and his audience was difficult to miss. Even as Cavetown has grown from music recorded and shared online into a project capable of filling venues around the world, that sense of direct communication remains central to the live experience.
With billions of streams and multiple RIAA Platinum certifications now attached to the Cavetown name, ‘Big Strong Man’ does something more interesting than simply measure how far Skinner has travelled. It looks back at the person he was expected to become and examines the distance between that expectation and the person who eventually emerged.
