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Cayetana: The New Normal

The members of Cayetana are doing it by themselves

It happened on a sunny evening in the summer of 2016. The members of Cayetana were gathered on the roof deck of bassist Allegra Anka’s South Philly rowhome, discussing what to do with their new record. It had been finished since spring, but the labels they’d approached weren’t biting.

The solution, they found, was an obvious one: This power trio rooted in DIY punk was going to do it themselves and launch their own label to release New Kind Of Normal (Plum).

“We had always talked about it,” says frontwoman Augusta Koch. “And we realized, ‘Why can’t we do this ourselves? We can hire a publicist, we can do all the stuff labels do.’ And I think that was very liberating.”

“Some people were like, ‘Are you sure? That’s not necessarily the safest bet,’” says drummer Kelly Olsen. “Every time we doubted it, we came back to, ‘No, no, of course we can do this.’”

While their 2014 debut Nervous Like Me was filled with full-steam-ahead punk hooks and touches of new-wave inspiration (Anka’s Peter Hook-esque bass counterpoints, glimmers of synth), Normal is an exercise in dynamics, raging out on “Mesa” and “Grumpy’s” but stopping down for the pensive “Side Sleepers” and the empowered burn of “Certain For Miles” where Koch cries out, “When the world bears down on me, will I laugh at its audacity/And be able to start again?”

“I’m a huge Patti Smith fan, and she has this really great quote about how she’d rather make music that’s overlooked than music that’s insincere.” says Koch. “Are we nervous about people liking this new record because it’s very different? Yes. But it’s very honest, and that’s all we could do. I’d rather make a really honest and sincere record that’s scary and vulnerable and on our own label than be on a major label and making what other people want to hear. It’s about trusting ourselves.”

—John Vettese