The Cavemen Go, New Lives (thecavemengo.com).  The Cavemen Go, which began as a gown/gown blend of Yale and SCSU students in the early 2000s, have always understood that blue-eyed sensitivity and chord-heavy R&B keyboards are as essential to gritty ‘60s-style American garage rock as hair-shaking gyrations, tambourines and “woo-woo”s. Add an alt-country twang at times and this soul-bending band matches early-‘70s Kinks for artful, articulate pop cross-pollination. The gripping thumps that begin “Hey, At Least I Tried” suck you in to  an increasingly complex relationship song. “Frequency Modulation” has  such tricky media metaphors plus enough hooks, talky bits and anthemic chants to evoke Elvis Costello, Beck and Chumbawumba simultaneously, with the folky restraint of Wilco. I’ve prized my live-radio bootleg of the cutting ballad “Come at Me With a Knife” (“I’ll stay committed/If you stay combative/I always love a  good fight”), for years; it’s nice to finally hear a crisp studio production with layered vocal harmonies and Emily Hamar’s dynamic keyboards up front.  The band’s latest line-up change—New Haven Advocate music critic Brian LaRue on bass and backing vocals —isn’t reflected on these 12 tracks, recorded at houses in Connecticut and Maine, then mixed and mastered in band leader Jeremy Sage’s new home state of Massachusetts. Such shifts haven’t stalled a band that  still maintains its founding dynamic duo of Sage and drummer Bob "Rock" Breychak. These Cavemen continue to evolve, matter, and rock your mind.
The Cavemen Go plays a CD release show July 10 at Cafe Nine with The Rub Wrongways Caravan of Stars.

Inderivium, The Empty Injection (10 Foot Reach/Sling Slang Records). There are six tracks of metallic modern hard rock here full of hard-hitting (if not outwardly catchy) riffs that are dark in tone, played with not-wanky dexterity. They’re topped off by a strong singer with solid command of tone and the ability to communicate emotion with his voice. And there are good vocal melodies. Unfortunately on at least half the songs the choruses don’t sound much like choruses, lacking either the dynamic switch-up or the recognizable key lyric that signifies “chorus.” That’s not to say the band doesn’t alter their dynamics at all. They do, and they handle the transitions well, but they do so at points that don’t always make compositional sense, as in the screamy break in “Little Angels,” a song which, as it turns out, has a recognizable chorus. There are a lot of worthwhile parts throughout the disc. On future recordings it would be good to hear how they approach fitting the parts together.

Inderivium plays July 11 at Cherry Street Station in Wallingford.

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