Cold Cave sounds like they just stepped out of Chicago’s Medusa’s on their way to Wax Trax. For those who don’t get the references, Medusa’s was a late 80s, early 90s all ages club in Chicago that highlighted industrial music and the electro-pop that Cold Cave channel. The club provided solace for all the out of place, picked on “skinny puppies” who donned black leather and Doc Martins, rather than their high school colors, for pep rallies. Wax Trax, of course, was the label that provided the industrial soundtrack for Medusa’s and so many Midwestern youth anxious to break free of their suburban and rural surroundings.
Now, nearly 20 years later there is Cold Cave, not sounding a day over 1989. Consisting of founder Wes Eisold, formerly of hardcore bands Some Girls and Giving Up the Ghost, Xiu Xiu’s Carelee McElroy, and the one and only Dominick Fenrow, better known as Prurient, the band is a boon for fans not only of the late 80s electro-industrial scene, but also electro-pop bands like New Order and Depeche Mode.
After a slew of 7” and ep releases that touched on goth, industrial and noise, Cold Cave released their impressive debut “Love Comes Close,” earlier this year on Heartworm Press. The album sold out quickly. Thankfully Matador stepped in, signed the band, and recently reissued the album.
“Love Comes Close” begins with “Cebe and Me,” a piece of noisy electro squawks and squiggles with distorted vocals provided by McElroy. The piece seems like a throwaway intro song at first, but on repeated listens the song displays an intriguing tension between the sweetness of the bands electro-pop approach and the dark underbelly that runs throughout the album. Light breaks across the album’s titular track, with Eisold taking over vocal duties and delivering a nice little slice of pop that recalls classic New Order. It isn’t until the third track though that the band finds their footing with the infectious “Life Magazine.” Layers of pulsating synth and guitar buoyed by a simple techno beat and coupled with McElroy’s heavily reverbed vocals turn a simple goodbye song into an anthem. It is hard not to want to move your body in some way, shape, or form when listening. Hell, it might even make you jump up and dance your way out of some shitty situation that you needed to leave a long time ago.
What follows is a steady stream of intoxicating gothpop, and while that sounds like a ridiculously horrible proposition, or something best left to high schoolers who shop at Hot Topics, it really isn’t. Cold Cave have created something special here. “The Laurals of Erotomania” and the plodding “Heaven Was Full” find the band perfectly mixing light with dark to create the best songs never written for Factory Records or Wax Tracks, but should have been. The real payoff comes with “The Trees Grew Emotions and Died,” which may be the best song of this year. It is an unbelievable dance piece that has Eisold and McElroy delivering choppy lyrics over synth arpeggios, squalls of guitar noise and two different continuous beats. This is the only song I know of that makes me want to dance when I am sober (albeit when no one is looking). The band brings things down for the somber “Hello Rats,” but return to the pulsating electro-pop they do so well for the albums final tracks “Youth and Lust” and “I.C.D.K.”
The wonder of Cold Cave is that they channel what should be easily disposable pop shot through with the awkwardness of a high school goth into something substantial, something downright grand. Maybe it is because Cold Cave remind me of so many bands that I loved in high school, or maybe it is because they are just that damn good, but “Love Comes Close” gets my highest recommendation.
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