Cave Painting lead singer Adam Kane sings, "You can take the long road back," and he'd probably suggest that you could take the long road there or here or you could take the long way around as well. The point that he'd like to make is that all roads are long. There are no such things as short roads to anywhere worth writing a song, a play, a movie or a book about. The simplest of things aren't even footnotes, they're just dismissed, vanquished by better, tougher things to have come by.
There's a bit of a buzz in the air with Cave Painting, a feeling that the sunsets that are stretched out in front of our noses are being foreshortened and that there's no way we might ever get to that sun, no matter how long we were to walk. With a hanging harvest moon, it's different. While we know that men have walked upon it, we never entertain the thought of going there, of ever being able to reach that white rock. With the distance and with the horizon, we always believe that we can get there, right there to where it just drops off, though we also understand the foolishness of such an endeavor. These roads that Kane thinks about are the kinds that we lie awake and think of at night - ones that keep us stammering, that keep us anxious and often excited, as if we're caught in some kind of solvable vortex. We can figure out the way to get to the ends of these roads with the right amount of effort. It's the road of loneliness or to loneliness that proves lengthy. It's the road toward love that's the longest. There are short roads to it, but the wind up being detours with terrible signage.
The band from Brighton, United Kingdom, make these long roads sound as if they're able to be vacationed to, or they're vacationable. They seem like they'd be good for a gander, good for wasting time on, as if we'll still manage to feel fulfilled afterward, the same way we do after a holiday feast. It's that we feel remorseful and still unapologetic in the gluttony, in the scrambled meandering. Some places can feel cold before they feel warm and these roads are great reminders of that.