NYC-based indie pop duo Cafuné released their new song “Perspective” last week via Elektra Records. The track sets a pace that illustrates a mind in perpetual motion, searching for something, determinedly, at a high velocity.
Cafuné released their debut album Running, in 2021, and while it saw moderate success that year, its lead single “Tek It” blew up on TikTok the following year, leading them to their Elektra Records deal shortly thereafter. Running was written and produced by the duo at their homes throughout the pandemic in 2020, and they released it in June 2021 on their proprietary label, Aurelians Club.
Starting out acoustically, singer Sedona Schat sets the stage on “Perspective”: we’re lost in the what-ifs and the made-up scenarios that we hope will make us feel better, but will likely never come to fruition. We’re looking around but what are we really seeing? There’s exactly one thing standing in the way, and it’s an agreement that just couldn’t, in the end, be met.
“And I saw your face fall through the hours of daylight left / Now we’re running out of time / I think I’m losing perspective”
The song breaks into its brisk, clipping pace right before the second verse, recalling Metric’s breakout single “Help I’m Alive,” both tracks sharply introspective and driven by an anxiety personified throughout the production. Schat effortlessly flits in and out of her airy falsetto, telling us of placated arguments and perpetual wounds that won’t heal.
“Perspective” lives simultaneously in the past and the present. Here, we’re trapped in memories while trying in real time to learn from the pain and discomfort of them, limboing between growth and regression to old habits. The band has described the composition of the song as being generated from a conversation “about the death of relationships in our respective lives, and the disorientation that can come with shifting into a new season of life without someone who was once your everything.”
Composed of two former students at New York University, Sedona Schat and producer Noah Yoo formed Cafuné in 2014 while attending the Clive Davis Institute at NYU. As student musicians there, the two were among some of the featured young artists in a Pharrell-led Masterclass (the same one where singer Maggie Rogers notably impressed Pharrell by her performance of “Alaska.”) Yoo has described the project as alt-pop with the intention to prove that “pop doesn’t have to be dumbed down.”
Cafuné’s music has straddled a pop and indie-rock line, vacillating from their earlier electropop-leaning style. Their 2015 debut EP, Love Songs For Other People, skillfully encapsulates the blending of these seemingly disparate soundscapes. The production is usually sunny and beachy, even as a backdrop against their more ruminative or foreboding lyricism.
The duo recently opened for CHVRCHES during the east coast leg of the Scottish band’s 2022 Screen Violence Tour. Cafuné are embarking on their own headlining U.S. tour across February and March, with multiple sold-out dates including Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. They’ll also play the Shaky Knees Festival in Atlanta on May 6, before heading abroad in September for a number of European shows alongside English musician Cavetown. They will have support from Brooklyn-based surf-rock/new wave-adjacent group Bathe during the North American dates.
Watch the Official Karaoke video for “Perspective” here. Stream/purchase the song here.
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Cafuné Tour Dates:
March
03 – Polaris Hall @ Portland, OR
04 – Barboza @ Seattle, WA (SOLD OUT)
06 – Rickshaw Stop @ San Francisco, CA (SOLD OUT)
08 – The Echo @ Los Angeles, CA (SOLD OUT)
09 – Constellation Room @ Santa Ana, CA (SOLD OUT)
10 – Valley Bar @ Phoenix, AZ
13 – Dada @ Dallas, TX
14 – Cheer Up Charlie’s (SXSW Festival) @ Austin, TX
20 – The Masquerade @ Atlanta, GA
21 – The Basement East @ Nashville, TN
24 – Songbyrd Music House and Record Cafe @ Washington, DC (SOLD OUT)
25 – The Foundry at The Fillmore @ Philadelphia, PA
26 – Brighton Music Hall @ Boston, MA
28 – The Bowery Ballroom @ New York, NY
May
06 – Shaky Knees Festival @ Atlanta, GA
September
19 – L’olympia @ Paris, France
21 – Palladium Cologne @ Cologne, Germany
22 – TivoliVredenburg @ Utrecht, Netherlands
24 – Alexandra Palace Great Hall @ North London, United Kingdom