Cayucas & Matt Costa

A return to musical roots is a time-honored tradition for many established artists who have endured for the better part of a decade. Forming and shaping an identity can take an album or two, and perpetuating forward motion while perfecting a sound can take another. Sometimes a swerve gets thrown in, an unseen obstacle sets itself in the middle of a path, or an experiment or two get eked out for one reason or another. But oftentimes by this point in a career an itch pops up to circle back to where it all began in order to do what the artist does best. And so, for their fourth album as Cayucas, brothers Zach and Ben Yudin are heading back to the beach—in other words, to the sunny, vibrant, melodic rock from which they first paddled out.

A year or so on from their third album Real Life and nearly a decade since their debut, Bigfoot, in the summer of 2019 Cayucas sat down to take stock of their lot. With Real Life they had achieved a bigger, poppier, more bombastic sound; before that, with 2015’s Dancing at the Blue Lagoon, they had explored a moodier and more artsy terrain. Bigfoot had put them on the indie pop map with its catchy songwriting, buoyant rhythms, and singalong choruses, with lyrics celebrating the bright, coastal Californian life and all it has to offer. And so, dipping back into the creative juices still firmly flowing following the Real Life recording process and tour, the Yudins got started on a new album with a familiar tinge.

Matt Costa