Cold Cave: Love Comes Close

Doing my pre10 research on Cold Cave got me damned excited for the record. Lead dude Wesley Eisold was also lead dude in American Nightmare, a band that I enjoyed very much earlier in this decade. Cold Cave’s initial CS/EPs (which I hadn’t heard) were released through the venerable Hospital Productions and last year Eisold played under the Ye Olde Maids moniker with Major Stars, probably my favorite hometown band.

So bring on Love Comes Close the LP released this month on Matador, I thought. Give it to me ten times. Unfortunately, what I ended up with was a record that had worn out it’s welcome a few spins before the 10th. Well, except for one track that is undoubtedly one of my favorites of the year. Weird.

Opener, “Cebe and Me” opens with a promising stutter step of electronic feedback coupled with an insistent bassline of similar digital lineage. But, the spoken word vocals of Caralee McElroy (formerly of Xiu Xiu, dammit why don’t I love this record??) are produced with so much affectation she sounds like nothing so much as an airport recording telling you not to park in the loading zone. Like most of the record it’s a song that lost both it’s emotional and visceral connections with me by not being interesting enough to be as repetitive as it is.

Hitting listen 7 on the title track or “The Trees Grew Emotions And Died” or “Youth And Lust” the less than dynamic synth lines repeated for entire lengths of songs, and we’re talking 4 minute songs here, were almost completely disengaging. Perhaps the biggest disappointment with Eisold involved is that the lyrics don’t help. This is a crucial strike on a record where so little else is going on. The man who once cut to the quick with sharp bruising lines like “City lights and colder nights/I’m innocent besides the fights” is now giving us “A synthetic world without end sheds a tear of plastic deception.” Eep.

Having said all this, I’d also like to say that all is nearly forgiven for the perfect slice of weirdo vocal delay pop on track 3, “Life Magazine”. The sprightly (and multipart!) synth lead grooves over some seltzer fizz feedback while McElroy’s echoing vocals do their own rhythm work. And I think she says “Wiseau.” The song ends with her repeating the phrase “not going back,” and everything about “Life Magazine” makes you believe it’s off to somewhere great. If only it could bring the rest of this inexplicably unaffecting record with it.