"Folk-cellar pop with electronic elements, the subject matter covering everything from impending apocalypse to teaching English in Japan." The Independent
Zoey van der Kamp was born into a strict Amish community in rural Pennsylvania in 1969 and never saw an automobile until the age of 12. She ran away to New York at the age of 15, changed her name to Zoey van Goey and quickly became immersed in Manhattan's burgeoning street-art movement before relocating to Berlin and finding considerable success with her street murals and installation-based work. She became a constant, if peripheral, fixture of Berlin's cultural elite in the late 80's, embarking on an affair with German film director Wim Wenders. After the Wall came down at the end of the decade, her movements become less clear, many saying she moved into East Berlin before fading enigmatically from public view...
Which brings us to Zoey Van Goey the band, and, hearing about their origins and approach to making music, their choice of name becomes much more than an exercise in quirky wordplay.
Zoey Van Goey, like many others bands before them, were a product of serendipity and cosmopolitan wanderlust: hailing from Canada, Ireland and England, they finally coalesced around the verdant cloisters of Glasgow University. If this constitutes a weak parallel with their namesake's intrepid sense of adventure, what resonates more are the intriguing contradictions, the subject matter and the inventive musical execution of their debut album which conjures up a wide-eyed rites of passage, meshing the everyday with the fantastical; the optimism and adventure of youth, with the anxieties and pressures of the modern world...
So with 'The Cage Was Unlocked...' we find bandits and buried treasure co-existing with tales of TEFL students teaching in Fukuyama; dark ruminations on the coming apocalypse alongside romantic kidnap ballads; a surreal journey that's as melodically whimsical as it is structurally complex. With the fairytale element heightened further by Peter Diamond's Herge meets Henry Darger artwork, Zoey Van Goey's debut album becomes a work of charming ambition loaded with full-blooded sing-along choruses, understated keyboards, close harmonies and irresistible melodies - all underpinned by various musical ephemera including vintage Super Mario sound effects.
The album was produced by 2010 British producer of the year Paul Savage (The Delgados, Franz Ferdinand, The Phantom Band)