“You Loved the Cage” is Spinors’ take on the end of a relationship as a story about emotional dependency, freedom and the fact that two people can go through the same breakup in entirely different ways. It’s about a couple who have been through a lot together and have supported each other through the difficult times when they had nothing else. They have a bond forged in that shared hardship. When one of them finally breaks free that bond is very different on each side. To the narrator it’s just abandonment. After all they’ve been through together, how can the other person just walk away? The title is spot on really in that respect as it suggests that the cage could have been a prison and could have also been a place of comfort and identity. As Sergie Code puts it: “When they were going through the hard times they both supported each other to get through it, but when they were free one went back to his cage and the other moved on.” It’s a very poignant premise and that’s what gives the song such emotional heft.
“You Loved the Cage” is a very accomplished piece which brings together a number of strands of rock history without really losing its own identity. It’s a very powerful, riff based piece with a very 70s feel in its approach, the verses are very thick and dense in the way they’re constructed and that’s very much the stoner rock/grunge aesthetic. Against that heaviness the chorus is a much more forceful, more immediate release and that’s what makes it such a good chorus. One of the most interesting things about the song is the guitar solo which goes into Arabic scales and takes full advantage of the harmonic ambiguity of the song. That’s a very effective and unusual touch which adds a real colour to the arrangement and it’s a perfect reflection of the ambiguity at the heart of the story itself. The relationship is one that doesn’t provide a simple answer. The song itself moves beyond the very conventional rock vocabulary too. The finale brings all of those elements together in a final surge and it doesn’t just end on a quiet note, it ends with energy. “Sometimes the hardest cage to escape is the one that once helped you survive” that’s the essence of the song really and that’s the conflict that runs through it. Love, loyalty, dependence and freedom all become very difficult to disentangle.
The music video takes the story further by completely undermining the narrator’s version of events. In the song the person left behind is left to believe that their partner has simply walked away and abandoned them, that they have broken the relationship and no longer need them. The video however paints a very different picture. The woman is still in the grip of addiction and the man has got over his own and has chosen to go on. All of a sudden the question of who has abandoned whom is not so clear cut and neither of the two can be the simple victim or the simple villain. It’s a perfect example of the Spinors philosophy which is that something can be undefined until it’s observed. The song and video are a call to re-evaluate what you think you know when you have a different perspective on the same story. Spinors are a band founded by Argentine born singer and guitarist Sergie Code and they blend this kind of multi-faceted storytelling with a steampunk look and sound. “You Loved the Cage” is not just a heartbreak song, it’s a lesson in the fact that two people can go through the same story and walk away with completely different truths.
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