Don Cavalli

Everloving Record

Don Cavalli is all about raw, unprocessed creativity that grows how it wants, when it wants and smirks rather than apologizes for its wilds.

Born Fabrice Cavalli, the French singer/songwriter/guitarist is known for his diverse style ranging from folk and rock with occasional echoes of Cajun, Zydeco and World music. The Don’s eclectic fusions also caught the ear of Grammy award winner, Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys with whom he shared a stage while earning unanimous praise for his first solo album Cryland that made #12 in MOJO’s 2008 top 50 albums and #13 in Uncut’s Americana albums that same year. Variety’s Dave Lewis wrote: “Talented without being showy, guitarist Cavalli twists standard blues-rock conventions and injects them with shots of funk, punk, garage and psychedelia.”

Whilst many artists would have ridden the wave of a successful debut album, Cavalli is a passionate man that believes in taking his time to do things right. Thus, he had no qualms about doing construction jobs, gardening and working as an undertaker in between projects.”I could have been a full time musician. But with constant touring, you end up repeating yourself,” says Cavalli. “I prefer to have time to compose.”

Fast forward five years later and Don Cavalli returns with his sophomore album, Temperamental; offering listeners thoughtful lyrics accompanied by a spectrum of head bopping-foot tapping music whether it is the electro sound of “Santa Rita”, the brooding rhythm of “Me and My Baby”, the Hip-Hop and sitar combination featured in “Feel Not Welcome” or the prairie Dixieland style banjo with a distinctively Chinese melody “The Greatest”; every track’s sound is bolstered by crisp, clean contemporary production.

Temperamental is upbeat, but it contains a few dark elements that gives the record its bittersweet edge. Whether it’s ‘Say Little Girl’ a.k.a “the murder song”- a dialogue with Rosemary Standley of French-American group Moriarty or ‘The Greatest,’ a hymn about impossible love. Through alternating tempos and rhythms, Don Cavalli mimics the ever changing nature of human emotion through the medium of sound. Temperamental offers a surreal, bohemian experience invoking lands as fantastical as that depicted on the cover artwork, Cavalli has once again created an album that dismantles every code of the musical genres that inspired him. “It sounds old, but not traditional,” he says. “I do not follow; I just want to create my own thing.”

On the album’s title-track Cavalli calls out, “War, sufferings/tornadoes and hurricanes/ temperamental! This world is temperamental!” He’s right. There is no progress without struggle and there is life after Cryland – that life has been Temperamental and it’s been well worth the wait.