The Best Version of Gloria There Ever Was
by Cavedweller
$10.00
The Temple Inc.

The Best Version of Gloria There Ever Was

review: Cavedweller's Oblivion

by Shon Toney

Cavedweller - The Best Version of Gloria Ever There Was The Temple Inc. and Business Deal Entertainment, 2006

Cavedweller's newest begins expansively and ends explosively. Skipping across the country to finish a trail of illegitimate conversations his imagination snuck away and spawned on drunken nights he was distracted with trying to keep the headlights going in the same direction. He's a more seasoned traveler for this round of shimmery falsetto folk psychedlia. Making a clear distinction between the man and the horse he road in on. Despite being inseparable, seemingly unable to stable her liberties because he "can't afford" it.

And for good reason-- there're bits and pieces of him all over the map! As he leaps in and out like Google Earth on a meandering scavenger hunt for black majick rhythms, cocaine cookies, and post modern love conundrums. Everything's fuzzy at first, dropping us into a fractured ocean of details sharpening themselves against the stoned groove. Yet, our Cavedweller is always acutely aware of his location. Even when drifting through the space between... or closer and closer to the sun. But like mythic Icarus-- you've been lovingly warned.

Three tracks in, "Can't Cook Down No More" seems to hold the jangly, life-sized road map. Tracing the unlikely highlights of Cavedweller's journey from a pubescent puking on planes to an adolescent who knows better than steering into a place called "Gun Barrel City" Texas (especially having already been run out of much friendlier sounding locales). Just to retire in the first line of the very next song.

But the journey's only begun. He still has to climb the sky's precipitations, shedding styles like cherished rattlesnake skins, to stare at the sun until it becomes the eyes of the girl who believes, letting everything else burn and burn and...

"The Best Version Of... Ever" is relaxingly well honed, purposefully meandering, and deceptively simple. Like a ninja posing as a folk singer who rides the same bus for 17 years just to pull off a hit... but much more restless. Cavedweller admits that, like every runaway train, he might have to sleep in the ditch. But not before conjuring other restless spirits for rounds of libation, mesmerism, and, as needed-- silky execution.

But Cavedweller doesn't want to hurt anybody. Just lure them in to his warm sonic lair, buried under haunted layers of rock, and sing them a funeral dirge. About how illogical hell thinks heaven's being... How to sew a seamless shirt... How to stick a feather in your hair and call it something besides macaroni... How the hi-way stretches on forever (if the sun doesn't burn us alive first)... Until all the conversations are tucked safely with care back into their wombs... And he rides off... Alone at last.

review of Cavedweller - Sugary Glue and A Bow of Bees

by M. Alex Goldman, Venus Magazine

With nothing more than a guitar, a little clapping and whistling, and the best of intentions, Cavedweller can make lo-fi sound epic. It’s certainly not the production, which is pretty much unencumbered straight recordings, with the notable exception of the prolific and musically fertile Cavedweller’s (nee Dirk Michener) multi-tracked vocal harmonies, which sometimes stand on their own like Gregorian chants in a deep baritone, sometimes accompanied sparsely by acoustic guitar, like Beck if he actually sounded like he had fun, as opposed to just sounding like he wants to. With songs that feel like they could melt into one another and rarely stretch over the three minute mark (21songs in 36 minutes!), Sugary Glue and a Bow of Bees is like listening to the decompression of a genius’ head, a perpetual summer afternoon, or a weekend at the beach with your closest friends.