Cafuné’s 'Bite Reality' Captures the Humanizing Paradox of Vulnerability and Grandeur: Album Review
- Abby Anderson
- 2 hours ago
- 3 min read
Stand-out tracks: "The Moment" "e-Asphyxiation" "Temporary Lover (ft. Riovaz)"
Our favorites: "Attack + Release" "Sore Spot" "Avid Athlete"
Release date: September 12, 2025
For fans of: Luke Hemmings, Purity Ring, The Neighbourhood
Cafuné’s sophomore album Bite Reality is all the best pieces of the alt-rock duo comprised of Sedona Schat and Noah Yoo: layered guitars and shoegaze-washed textures, moments of electronic shimmer, lyrics that balance biting honesty with tender vulnerability. The result: a soundtrack for dreamers and skeptics alike—an alt-rock daydream that knows exactly how fragile and fleeting connection can be, yet still reaches for it anyway. Bite Reality is a luminous exploration of existence in an age where living and proving life often blur. It asks: What does humanity look, sound, and feel like in a dehumanizing era? Why prove that you’re alive when you can just live?
The opening track, “The Moment,” sets the scene with the lush, layered instrumentals that have become Cafuné’s signature. The sound radiates hope, all while tracing the beautifully fleeting impermanence of human experience. Softer and dreamier, “Attack + Release” lets Schat's and Yoo’s vocals entwine over a glimmer of electronic production and a romantic rhythm that eventually swells into a soaring bridge. Here, they teeter on the edge between quiet surrender and a desperate demand for something greater: “Break a cycle with another answer.”
The lead single, “e-Asphyxiation,” distills the paradox of our digital age: suffocated by endless connection, yet tethered to it all the same. Its brilliance lies in a single piercing question: "Why do I have to prove that I am alive online?” A different light shines through in “Sore Spot,” which leans on airy acoustics and offbeat drum textures to craft a shoegazy, alt-rock haze. It feels like the cinematic moment of unexpectedly locking eyes with a past lover beneath a disco ball in a shadowy room, equal parts creating feelings of nostalgia and heartache - or palpable knowledge of disconnection from a connection of the past.
Cafuné geniusly builds sonic worlds that shift between intimacy sonically massive moments that feel delightfully dizzying. This duality, so human in its contradiction, can be heard in the flip from “Sore Spot” to “Stupid Justice.” Dipping back into the sound of their debut album Running, “In My Pocket” would fit right into that earlier tracklist, though lyrically it shows greater vulnerability and acceptance of connection. Over a golden, lo-fi rock shimmer, they admit, “I know I may be flawed but you’re the only one I’ve got.” “Can’t Help It” drifts closer to pop, weaving in subtle vocal distortion, while “Temporary Lover (ft. Riovaz)” glows with alt-pop nostalgia, evoking the nostalgic sonic of alt-pop greats like BROODS, Purity Ring, and The XX.
The back half of the record cuts deeper emotionally, with “Avid Athlete” reflecting on the sting of connection severed without warning. Sedona’s crystalline vocals pierce through as they confront the dishonesty of love turned sour: “Don’t sacrifice your truth / You’ll never be me and I don’t wanna be you.” Its counterpart, “justwhenuthought,” is Noah’s moment—a grittier, spiraling interlude that serves as a dual-perspective companion piece.
Closing track “Old Issues” returns to Cafuné’s shoegaze pop-rock roots, grappling with the paradox of desiring connection in a world that feels both decreasingly and increasingly connected, singing, “I’ve become someone who can’t talk to strangers / Maybe better being alone / I won’t say I was always this way / There’s some things time can heal on its own.” Its outro is drenched in deliciously layered guitars, capped off by the ultimate claim: “I got it wrong.”
With Bite Reality, Cafuné balances intimate vulnerability and massive soundscapes, crafting a record that is a reminder that existence doesn’t need proof, it just needs to be lived.
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