Cold Cave, the musical brainchild of Wesley Eisold, has significantly evolved from its last studio album, "Love Comes Close" (2009). The band's original sound was an amalgamation of synthpop and haunting melodies showing tribute to the new-wave goth movement that Eisold discovered in New York City.
As Eisold wrote on his blog, "When the album was announced a few weeks ago, it was said that the record is a love letter to NYC. That's not exactly true. It's a love letter to the path that has led me to where I am now, to loss and love and friends and enemies and the dizzied and blurred ways of the world. This song and record is about magic, preservation, youth and movement."
The lyrics do play into the romantic themes Eisold references, picking up on the nostalgia he felt as he traveled through all the cities he'd grown up in, but on first listen the lyrics are not the first thing you notice.
"Cherish the Light Years," the band's newest release, is a loud, harmonious chorus of '80s-style synthesizers, reminiscent of everything from New Order to Depeche Mode, especially with Eisold's moody vocals lamenting the too-quick progression of his life. The opening song, "The Great Pan is Dead," is a bold beginning, and it is clear to anyone who knows any of Cold Cave's previous music that this album is going to be very different.
From songs such as their 2009 single "The Laurels of Erotomania," a hypnotic dance track that wouldn't have been out of place alongside anything by Visage in an '80s disco hall, to the deceitfully upbeat sound of this album's "Pacing Around the Church," Eisold has definitely acquired some depth in his songwriting. The energetic and prominent tones of the synthesizers mask the attitude of the lyrics as Eisold sings, "You can seldom count on love/ You can often count on hate/ You can always count on/ Death as your fate."
The timbre of "Cherish the Light Years" is somewhat repetitive, though, the replicated percussion setting a tone at the start of the album that persists throughout its entirety. This gives the impression that the album is just a single rather long song with no identifiable breaks. Some prefer this manner of listening to albums, but the strongest albums tend to set an overall tone and then build upon it, with songs branching off into different pitches and creating new atmospheres.
The only spot where this happens is in "Alchemy Around You," well after the halfway mark on the album, where the synthesizers are temporarily replaced with trumpets. It is from this point on that the album peaks again. "Cherish the Light Years" admittedly starts off strong, but after "Alchemy Around You," it becomes all the more apparent that the first several songs are almost indistinguishable from one another.
"Burning Sage," the second-to-last track, starts off slowly but builds up into the most dramatic song on the album. Eisold declares, "I feel so old but so young," before the song hits its apex and the drums and synthesizers kick back in for an impressive ending to the song. The final song on the album, "Villains of the Moon," is, unfortunately, an unremarkable way to end an album that could have been less forgettable had it ended on a higher note.
Yet Cold Cave's sound, however one-note it seems to be, is an interesting one. Perhaps with a little more evolution, the band will reach a place where every song stands out.
