Notes by Scott Hull

This record sounds fucking awesome. Sorry for the "language" but it's true. How this record was made to sound this way in 2018 is a mystery to me. Hats off to the production (Matt) and recording and mix engineers ( John and Josh).

Why does is sound so good? It was made like a record would have been made 20 years ago. It’s Full of analog energy and professionally crafted sounds. And it isn't shouting all the way. It takes you on a journey.

I hear rock records all day, and this one always sounds great. But, you have to hear the vinyl to hear what i’m talking about. The digital version of this album is great, and it sounds a lot like any good rock record. But the vinly screams 1990 to my ears. Seattle had a sound and the world was just hearing it on the big stage.

Drums, of course, are great on this record—epic! But I love how the guitars fit together. This is a record I just put on the turntable, turn up, sit back, and listen ( picture the Maxell Tape add from many years ago). If you don’t agree I’ll buy the record back from you

The Masterdisk Review

I’m always surprised when drummers release solo albums. To be clear, this is not because of any snobbishness on my part, but rather because all the drummers I know are in demand all the damn time, so I can’t imagine where they’d find the bandwidth to put together a whole album. I’m just a bassist and I’m lucky if I can get to the gym.

Case in point: The songwriting for Cavedweller, the first release from the very-much-in-demand Matt Cameron, began way back in the ‘80s shortly after Cameron moved to Seattle. ‘Cavedweller’ was the moniker under which Cameron produced his first songs before putting his own music aside to begin a thirty-year career with Soundgarden and later Pearl Jam, with whom he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Cameron produced Cavedweller himself, and he handles vocal and guitar duties, enlisting bassist Tim Lefebvre (one of my lafavorite bassists, if you will) and drummer Mark Giuliana after hearing their work on David Bowie’s final album, Blackstar. The result is a thoroughly modern rock album that reveals its influences without being defined by them. This is no chronicle; none of these songs screams ‘I wrote this in my first apartment in Seattle in 1983,’ so what we’re hearing is both old and new ideas that have been filtered and refined over the course of Cameron’s career. In that sense, Cavedweller succeeds in revealing that Cameron’s greatest talent may not even be his drumming, but rather his ability to listen.

Before Matt Cameron became a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and drummer for two of historys most impactful rock bands, he cut a handful of solo songs on Seattle cassette compilations under the name Cavedweller in the 1980's. Matt had recently relocated from his native San Diego to Seattle and introduced himself to the seminal scene he would eventually serve as a cornerstone member. So, it feels apropos that the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and world-renowned drummer would adopt Cavedweller as the title of his 2017 solo debut.