Cayetana - Nervous Like Me

Tricia Callahan | August 28,  2014

If you were to visit Cayetana’s Twitter feed, you are given the perfect encapsulation of the band, “Three girls, no guys, and a pizza place.”

 

Three friends from Philly have journeyed from instrument ignorance to a DIY organic punk sound with their band Cayetana. Their latest album Nervous Like Me from Tiny Engines blazes with a cohesiveness that can only be derived from pure chemistry.

 

The opening track “Serious Things are Stupid” traveled from the garage to your headphones and the ethos of what follows the same vein.

 

Flat gut driven vocals line the be-bop musicality of “Black Hills.” The tambourine bounces into lyrics that beg for freedom from a self-constructed societal cage that keeps us from the darkness of the world, “Let me run in the black hills/ Let me go on my own free will.”

 

Moving from the hills to the mountains, “Mountain Kids” paints a picture of how the enormity of the world and its features can dwarf even the most confident of souls. “Scott Get The Van, I’m Moving” is a fast paced runaway song about wanting to escape situations, whatever they happen to be.

 

“Hot Dad Calendar” has the most grandiose chords out of the whole album with consistent and prominent drums that push the track forward. The guitar riffs go against the grain of the vocals making the song compelling to the ear.

 

The album closes with “South Philly” with lyrics that could be poignant about any city, “I fall asleep to violence/ And I wake up to sirens.” This seemingly joyful melody takes a serious turn when it correlates God to a daydream and questions all the unanswered prayers.

 

Cayetana are like a mix between Jenny & Johnny, and She & Him, but really are in a bracket all their own with insightful lyrics and eclectic punk rock feel.