You know the feeling you get when you just know something but can’t quite put it into words? You have the ideas, you know what it’s about, what it reminds you off and still you can’t find a decent way to say it. No, wait, cross ‘decent’ out and replace it with ‘interesting’. Cause this is what I have to do as a journalist (-to-be). Find an interesting way to say something that is obvious.
I mean, when you listen to Cold Cave’s debut, ‘Love Comes Close’, isn’t it obvious they’re incredibly 80s? But not in a La Roux-cheesy-synths-all-over-the-place kind of way, even if their songs do turn out to be strange dancefloor fillers and odd disco numbers. Yes, they check two essential 80s electro bands: New Order ( the title song is blatantly influenced by them) and Human League (the cold atmosphere of the album plus the detached female vocals). But they also have elements of industrial the have a scent of Throbbing Gristle and they use their synths for the same reason Kevin Shields uses his guitar: to create a wall of sound. Cause for Cold Cave it’s all about sonic experimentation, noise, dissonance. Yes, they’ll make you dance, but they’ll make you dance like Joy Division would. Even the voice is reminiscent of Ian Curtis’s and at times, Wesley Eislod aims for the same gloom that Peter Murphy’s voice has. And in this bleak world of what seems to be nihilism and despair, the almost-too-chic lyrics about disdain fit perfectly.
It’s a surprisingly experimental album given the fact that Eislod used to front a number of hardcore bands (Some Girls among them), but if you consider that a former Xiu Xiu member is a part of this project, maybe you shouldn’t be so amazed of how it (sometimes) sounds. And, after all, people are allowed to experiment and shift musical directions if they feel like it, especially when the experimentation ends up being this good.
*photo courtesy of Cold Cave
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