Therapy, loving siblings, putting up walls and hyperpop: Cavetown takes us inside Running With Scissors

“It’s definitely about taking risks, but also not viewing risk as something to avoid,” begins Robin Skinner.

On the day of his album launch, still sleepy from a long haul flight, the 27-year-old indie artist better knows as Cavetown ponders the layered meanings of his album title, Running With Scissors.

“When you put walls up around yourself during a time that you need them, those walls can serve you. But sometimes they remain up even after that phase in your life is over. This stage of my life is figuring out how to put myself out there in ways that feel dangerous, and trust myself.”

Cavetown’s music career bloomed this way, having started out by uploading songs online from their Cambridge bedroom as a plucky teen. Today, he's amassed billions of streams and toured with heroes like Pierce The Veil, with whom he shared the stage at, among other places, no less a venue than Wembley last year.

Now on album six, it is here Cavetown looks at difficult emotions square in the eye, confronting the complexities of family, masculinity, vulnerability and, largely, love in its different forms.

Robin’s partner is a prominent muse, and messages to her can be found woven in Running With Scissors' stories. Now also a sibling with a 26-year age gap between himself and his little sister, one of the newest forms of love in Robin’s life has surfaced a bittersweet realisation, explored on Micah, which he wrote before her birth.

“I’d been talking about my sibling-to-be in therapy and about the song,” they explain. “I was listening to it on the way home and started to cry. I felt like the young kid in me was listening to it and saying, ‘I needed someone to support me and to hold my hand through life, to tell me they could understand.’ I feel excited for her to have someone like me to lean on.”

Both the tender moments and tough excavations that crop up on this record are further propped up by instrumental work that toys with tension and tranquility. Clamouring guitars and brash electronic elements often follow plink-plonking 8-bit sounds and acoustic guitar where delicacy thrives. Every song finds an intentional home.

“I was very sonically inspired by hyperpop production and I wanted to make very dry cuts that whiplash you a bit,” Robin shares. “In Tarmac, I wanted to evoke the feeling of being overstimulated and that big wall of sound moment at the end really does that for me.

“The songs on my albums usually have friends and I can imagine them having little tables in a lunch hall. Tarmac and NPC are definitely pals. I don’t necessarily pick songs to fit the album. If they don’t already fit, I make them fit.”

The maximalist, kooky flair across Running With Scissors will translate to a stage brilliantly, and a huge tour kicks off in February, taking Cavetown to places he’s never been before, like Singapore and Manila. Though naturally shy, Robin’s more than ready.

“This is a really bizarre way of life for me to fall into,” they admit. “[As Cavetown] I had to create a persona that’s a version of myself that wants to be seen.”

His fans forge a hopeful bubble at shows, making it all the more easier.

“People feel like they can be vulnerable and cry. I’m hoping to see that happen in more of a cathartic, crazy way with this new music. I’ve accessed more feelings of frustration and rage, and I think those come from a place of love.”

Running With Scissors is out now via Futures Music Group.

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