Cold Cave
Love Comes Close

In the years of complete new-wave regurgitation and synth-pop echoes, ours, a luminous play of mirrors reflects an intermittent light on the scarred walls of New York. It’s the glow of the plastic mantra of 'Cebe And Me', the fluorescent synths of 'Life Magazine' and 'I.C.D.K', the haughty beats of 'The Laurels Of Erotomania', the electro-dark remnants of 'Youth And Lust', which all unite into a multifaceted prism of colors that feels so much like cold sheets and stained mattresses. It is the romantic glow of Cold Cave from Philadelphia (Manhattan by adoption), an experimental electronic project painted with dark wave for lo-fi palates that, halfway between nihilism and romanticism, leads you to sift through the churned sounds of abandoned cellars and repurposed old garages. As we know, America currently teems with bands like these but very few manage to make us forget the world outside, nailing us to the floor of a dirty, paint-peeling room, forcing us to dance the electrified wave of this 'Love Comes Close'; sweaty, in religious silence, heads bowed, as if the 80s had just arrived.

Tattered, synthetic, dark, and misfit like Joy Division of the twenty-first century, the soft Clan Of Xymox of our days, Cold Cave adapt a sound violated by years of sequins and synthesizers, contextualizing it in our digital and arid era... Sometimes veering towards the analogosity of bands like early Depeche Mode and Erasure ('Love Comes Close' and 'The Trees Grew Emotions And Died'), other times ambiguously winking at the darker side of the eighties ('Heaven Was Full', 'Hello Rats'). Credit goes to the baritone timbre and the enigmatic mind of their leader Wes Eisold (previously in hardcore-punk bands like Some Girls and Give Up The Ghost), the looped synthesizers of Caralee Mc Elroy (formerly of Xiu Xiu), or simply the handful of decadent and poppy hits they flaunt in this debut LP. Nine tracks for 31 minutes of perfect electro-pop: artificial like flickering neon, electrifying like the best floor-fillers, and with the sole unsatisfying flaw of lasting really too little.