In case you didn’t live through it, there was a certain uneasiness to the Y2K era that can maybe best be summed up by the phrase “running with scissors” being applied to best-selling memoirs and beloved musical parody albums alike at the tail end of the 20th century. The late ’90s also gave us one Robin Skinner—a.k.a. Cavetown—who leans into these anxieties on his latest full-length, whose title Running with Scissors has much more in common with the drama of Augusten Burroughs’ writing than it does the comedy of Weird Al’s.
While exploring new realms such as hyperpop on these songs, the real core of the record lies in Skinner’s own autobiographical lyrics inspired by numerous personal and political moments that have transpired over the past few years. As he points out, the album manages to balance love and spite by showing us how one tends to inform the other—e.g. finding a sense of comfort as a trans person in a loving relationship only fueling a hatred for the evil rhetoric becoming normalized by an increasingly fascistic global right wing. Additionally, several songs touch upon the birth of Skinner’s sister and the unique blessing that is finally becoming an older sibling as 26 years old, as well as the out-of-body experience of playing to massive audiences only to soon wind up isolated in a hotel room.
With the record out now via Futures Music Group, listen along and read through Skinner’s track-by-track breakdown below.
1. “Skip”
“Skip” is the first love song I’ve written with positive overtones. Everything’s changed because I’ve fallen in love for real this time. I’ve been with my partner for three and a half years now and I’ve never been so sure that I’m in love with someone, so that’s a very exciting thing for me—to write about something new that I haven’t touched on so much.
2. “Cryptid”
Something new I’m bringing into this album is spite. It’s there just as much as love is. I think I owe it to love to realize how much I care about things. In allowing myself to love, I’ve allowed myself to feel angry about stuff I would usually just ignore. I’ve reached a point where I care so much more about the world because I care so much about my partner, and I want to live in a world that loves her and loves us together. Cryptids are a very literal representation of how Republicans perceive the trans community or really any marginal group. I hope that this song will feel like a release of anger, and empowering for people to sing back to me.
3. “Rainbow Gal”
“Rainbow Gal” is about my girlfriend, and how when I’m getting overwhelmed about being on tour and being seen and perceived around so many people, I zone out and look at her picture on my phone’s homescreen. As soon as I do that, I’m immediately brought back to myself. When I’m away from home, I picture her in our living room with all the vibey lights shining on her, and I feel like she absorbs all the color. That’s where the idea of “Rainbow Gal” came from. She brings all the color to my life. Without her, there is no color.
4. “Baby Spoon”
I wrote this around the time that [my girlfriend] was going through a big job change. She just graduated from Cambridge, but she was just finding it hard to get her life rolling, and this song was a reminder to her that I’d always be there to talk to her and make her feel better. Growing up as a transmasc guy, there was a phase where I felt I had to overdo the masculinity, and I felt like that’s what people expected me to bring to relationships, especially if I ended up with a girl. But with my partner now, the way I show up is never a problem. I can be delicate. I can be stereotypically feminine. I can be soft. I can be the baby spoon.
5. “NPC”
Mr. Nobody [my childhood imaginary friend] didn’t really have a form, he was just the absence of matter, carrying a suitcase. I realized I’d become Mr. Nobody. I find myself looking out the window of an airplane thinking that I didn’t even have the chance to settle in the place I’d just come from. I go to the new place and I think: how did I get here? Who told me to be here? Where’s my mom? What’s going on? I find that it all makes me zone out, dissociate, and I find that feeling makes me feel like an NPC. Like, I feel there’s a little chip in my brain with signals from the universe telling me where to go, and sometimes I feel like I’m not in control of it.
6. “Reaper”
“Reaper” allowed me to do some really different production stuff and lean into a kind of hyperpop vibe. I wrote this two summers ago. I came to LA for some writing sessions and ended up just blanking at the studio. I was hitting a real mental block. Before I hit the studio, I was crying on the floor of my Airbnb. I felt like I’d lost it, that I’d never be able to write a song again.
7. “Straight Through My Head (DO IT!!!)”
Sometimes I like to write songs addressing myself, especially when I’m catastrophizing and thinking I’m the worst person ever and deserve to die. In those moments, it helps for me to look in the mirror, and say something like: “Then do it, coward.” I know that I’m not going to, and I realize that I do like living. I remember that I don’t want to end everything, I just want everything to get better. I think it sometimes takes a song for me to speak constructively to myself about those feelings.
8. “Tarmac”
I wanted to paint with the music, and convey how it feels to get overwhelmed by yourself, then having to take a breather and ground yourself. You go from playing live in front of an extremely loud crowd and being recognized all the time to then suddenly being in a hotel room where everything’s quiet and still but your brain still keeps racing.
9. “No Bark, No Bite”
I’ve never had a sibling before and now I have one, with a 26 year age gap, which is a whole lot to process. I hadn’t even considered having a family role until I met my partner, and I guess in blanket terms this song is really about how lame men can be, and how I want to show up instead as an emotionally intelligent, mature guy who can access all my feelings and address problems and be empathetic to the women in my life.
10. “Micah”
I’ve always wanted a sibling and this one came out of left field. I realized while writing this song that I wasn’t just addressing [my baby sister], but myself, too. That’s the way I dealt with stuff as a kid: I’d push everyone away and wouldn’t talk to anyone. That’s my worst nightmare for my sister, for her to isolate herself and feel like she can’t open up. I really want to be someone that she feels like she can lean on, that she can be open with. I feel like I’ve done a lot of healing in these past couple of years, and that comes back to falling in love and having someone I want to show up for. Micah is another person I want to show up for.
11. “Sailboat”
I kept putting off [giving my girlfriend a stick and poke tattoo] and couldn’t figure out why. I just felt like there was so much more pressure riding on it because I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want to give her a busted tattoo. And, you know, what if we didn’t work out? I see her as my sailboat, with her name on the side of it.
12. “First Time”
[My first time driving in the US], I went over a hump, the lane to my left was full, and then I saw the state trooper on the side. I kept going, and then after a couple miles I saw the lights and was like, “Wow, am I really getting pulled over?” I was shaking. The whole way home I was just trying to be calm. I guess I felt a little bit dangerous to myself in that moment. I got home and basically wrote the song straight away. It felt like the perfect release of anger.
13. “Running with Scissors”
I feel like this is a great track to end on. If [my parents] ever fall down and stab themselves, they’ll still keep going. They’re just learning how to run better and have better balance on their feet. That’s just the way you have to move through the world. This whole “running with scissors” sentiment is my way of accepting that there’s so much risk and so much to be scared of in this world, but there’s also so much fun to be had, and so much to learn, and you’ll never get those things if you don’t just wing it.
