Underrated Revisited: Cavil At Rest

Sometimes great bands get overlooked. You know, like how your parents paid more attention to your gorgeous, honor roll making sister than they did you. This section of the blogosphere is devoted to those bands who never really got their due years past...

Cavil At Rest


In the wake of spring 2007, mid March, a video premiered on MTV2's famous Subterranean. In the video, presented like a puppet show, a felt curtain parted and five cardboard musicians began playing pop music.

Cavil at Rest is a five piece group of especially handsome boys from Orange County, CA. The lead singer has an afro (and he's adorable), but what should really get you to like them should be their relatable lyrics and dance-y pop beats. If, perhaps, an archetypal 90s boy band could learn to play the guitar then maybe Cavil at Rest would have never happened. Alas, they didn't, and CaR broke the barrier between pop and rock music.

Few bands before them could rock out and sing in perfect harmony simultaneously (and still retain their severe indie cred), thus Cavil at Rest were both trendsetters and trailblazers. On their first album, Orion Way, Cavil at Rest began to explore just how deep they could take pop music before it became kitschy. They also took advantage of their "on-the-cusp" sound to develop their music into something typically viewed as "Top 40."

The acoustic single, "We Could Love," creates a Hellogoodbye type melody, while backup vocals and tinkling pianos push it close to Augustana. On "Who's There?", the boys make hyped-up, energetic pop reflective with the lyrics, "And I feel I idealize you to death/Dare I speak/Dare I speak/And I am weary under the weight of all the things I could say."

As with many bands that create a new genre of music, Cavil At Rest gained a very loyal Californian fan following, but even after the positive reception of their video on Subterranean, they never really became as popular as they should've, making them one of the most underrated bands of early '07. Orion Way was released under Chop Chop Music, and CaR continues to be unsigned to a record label.

Cavil at Rest site here.
Album available here.

cavil at rest: "who's there?"
cavil at rest: "we could love"


"Who's There?"



Your electric bird,
Erika