Cai.ro – Young Love

Band: Cai.ro
EP: Young Love

Written by: Chiara DiAngelo

From the title, you might at first assume that Toronto band Cai.ro’s August 2011 EP Young Love is a bubble-gum pop album, but in actuality it is a stark depiction of both the perilous highs and agonizing lows of that thing called “young love.” Playing their own unique style of “orchestral-folk,” Nate Daniels (vocals, guitar), Dante Berardi Jr (guitar, vocals), Caitlin Grieve (strings, vocals), Wooyoung Kim (bass) and Matt Sullivan (drums, percussion) are artists as much as they are musicians on this 6-song EP, creating an intricately woven tapestry of sounds, at the heart of which is Daniels’ rich and lustrous voice.

The EP begins with two beautiful orchestral compositions in “Selfish” and “All These Colours.” Having the fullest sound and a steady beat made to bob your head along to, “All These Colours” may be the most accessible song on the EP. The violin and keys build and build, when midway through everything swells until it bursts, evoking the exhilarating feeling of triumphantly facing the wind, arms outstretched and being near swept away.

The band then plunges you face-first into the darker underbelly of love with the gut-wrenching and at times, harrowing depths of “Addict.” Simple string arrangements give way to some of the most heart-breakingly morbid lyrics in “My love for you is eating me from the inside out.” It’s the most beautiful portrait of decay. The deep, echoey vocals on “Vampyre” move into a bone-chillingly guttural chant of “no no no no no” that seems to come from somewhere deep within Daniels’ soul. The crashing drums and guitar get progressively louder, faster, more frightening, almost giving the sense they are able to raise the dead. If you make it to the next song alive, “Golden Cup” is electric and desperate and haunting, with the repetition of “I’ll get you back.”

Closing track “Halfway There” is a stripped down and minimal ballad. An ode to ending love, it’s the type of song you put put on while lying in your room in the dark to just let the gorgeous melancholic bliss of the piano wash over you. While tinged with the bitterness of having a “poisoned heart,” it ends with a peaceful sense of release of having let go: “I have my heart set on the real thing baby, and truthfully you’re only halfway there.” It’s the first step to regeneration and subsequent freedom from the chains of something not meant to last.

Cai.ro are AudioBlood’s Coffee Shop Project “Pick of the Month” for April so if you’re in Toronto, you still have time to pick up 3 free tracks at a participating local coffee shop. You can also stream their EP on their website or buy it on iTunes. But whatever you do, you want to see them bring these songs to life the next time you have the chance.