Drawing Cards with Cave People on “I Don’t Want Hope”
“I’ll admit I can do an alright cartwheel,” boasted Dave Tomaine, songwriter and crooner behind the project cave people.
Wormbrain got the chance to speak with Tomaine about the Philadelphia, PA indie rock group’s latest single off their upcoming full length Wind Burn, which was announced and shared seemingly out of the blue this past week! In the rocking, ever-introspective track “I Don’t Want Hope,” he sings about having some tricks and we really needed to find out more about what kind, so… we asked.
“I can’t believe you expect me to tell you my tricks? Like I’d just come out and say them?” we were originally told, but ultimately cave people’s heroic lead confessed, “On multiple occasions I’ve convinced people that there’s a scene in Cast Away where Tom [Hanks] becomes intimate with the ball [Wilson].”
He continued with, “I’m left-handed, but usually when I tell people that they assume it’s a trick, which is why honesty is really the greatest trick of them all.”
Also among the lyrics of “I Don’t Want Hope” are references to being a dog, obedient and loyal, but there are a lot of different kinds of dogs out there. We pressed Dave Tomaine to narrow it out and he pointed us in the direction of the Magic: The Gathering card ‘Spirited Companion.’
“It’s just a cute dog,” he told Wormbrain bluntly. “That’s the kind of dog I’d like to imagine I am.” Tomaine furthered his thought about the dog in the song’s lyrics by saying, “When they enter the battlefield you get to draw a card. That’s so tight I love drawing cards. Card draw is really important in Magic decks, underrated in my opinion. If you’re making a deck make sure you have decent draw or you’ll end up with nothing in hand and very few options per turn.”
Photo by Russell Edling.
While much of the album is yet to be shared, beyond its cover art (designed by Russell Edling of Golden Apples), its full track listing, and the early preorders for a cassette — a return for the project to New England record label Disposable America, it is clear that wind is a recurring theme. To this, DT told W.W quite simply, “The wind is cool.”
“I became pretty enamored with wind. I liked that we never see it, only the things it acts on,” he elaborated. “It’s gentle and also destructive. It became a metaphor for a lot of things while I was writing this but I think most directly it was a lesson in not clinging so tightly to a form, especially one that doesn’t serve you anymore, just because it feels comfortable. Inviting flexibility into my life, realizing that if the wind is knocking things over maybe they weren’t all that stable in the first place.”
“And then, the wind as hope, something fickle, difficult to hold on to, comes and goes as it pleases, something that can be devastating or comforting depending on the day.” Wormbrain looks forward to hearing the influence of the wind on this new record, but for now we’ll listen to “I Don’t Want Hope.”
Photo by Augusta Koch.
“I’m left-handed, but usually when I tell people that they assume it’s a trick...”
W.W: What is Wormbrain?
DT: Wormbrain is the sky at dusk in the summer when you’re a little sweaty from running around but not so much that you feel gross and you’re not going to go inside for awhile because it’s warm and just starting to get dark and you’re not worried at all about what you have to do the next day.
W.W: Thank you for sharing with Wormbrain.
“I Don’t Want Hope” is available now and streaming everywhere — off cave people’s upcoming album Wind Burn out on Disposable America on April 20th, 2022,
