Caged Animals is the recording project of singer-songwriter Vincent Cacchione and visual artist Magali Charron. Their new album, Make Strange Friends. Magali designed the album artwork, is directing a music video, and contributes violin and harmony vocals throughout. Vin grew up in New Jersey, so it’s in his nature to try a little harder. The son of a NYC stand-up comic and a public school teacher, he gravitated to songwriting at a young age and became a student at anti-folk academy. At the East Village’s fabled Sidewalk Café, you lived or died by what you were able to say. From early solo performances to his work in Soft Black with DIIV’s Zachary Cole Smith.

Over the last decade, he has collaborated with pioneering figures in fiction podcasts like Welcome to Night Vale, The Space Within, and Hedwig creator John Cameron Mitchell, honing his craft as a storyteller and songwriter along the way. Make Strange Friends was conceived during a transitional moment in Vin and Magali’s lives, after relocating to Magali’s hometown in Sackville, New Brunswick. There they met low-key indie legend Jon Mckiel, whose collaboration proved crucial.

With McKiel as co-producer, they embraced a raw, spontaneous recording approach on his Tascam 388 tape machine. The album harks to lo-fi treasures like The Basement Tapes and Mellow Gold, marrying rough-hewn, folky impressionism with a lush, post-modern palette, including guest appearances from Jeff Tobias, Frankie Sunswept, and Steven Lambke.

The album concludes with “Make Strange Friends,” a two-man absurdist play written by Vin. Produced as an old-fashioned radio drama, “Strange Friends” stars the writer Larry “Ratso” Sloman and Magali’s 92-year-old grandfather, Bertholet Charron, humorously exploring cultural misunderstandings and human connection and striking a unique harmony with the album’s songs.

pre-order Make Strange Friends by Caged Animals HERE