Is 2011 going to be the moment when all of the promising bands of the last few years start producing uninspired albums? Or at least the year when those with staying power are separated out from those without? It sort of seems that way. So far this year the previously awesome Ducktails turned in an immensely underwhelming album, The Pains of Being Pure At Heart apparently forgot how to write distinct and catchy melodies on their sophomore (slump) record, and now Cold Cave, one of the most promising bands to emerge in the past few years, have dropped a generic synth-rock brick on their latest offering “Cherish The Light Years.” What went wrong? Cold Cave began as the solo project of Wesley Eisold. Initially Eisold crafted wildly distorted experimental music largely indebted to industrial, goth and synth-pop. The music was often abrasive, but nearly always compelling. For his debut record, “Love Comes Close,” Eisold was joined by Xiu Xiu’s Caralee McElroy and Dominick Fernow, who is responsible for some of the finest dark noise of the last decade under the name Prurient. McElroy and Fernow’s contributions made for an impressive mix, and “Love Comes Close” ended up being an excellent collection of chilly goth-pop.
Now Eisold returns with “Light Years,” turning down the goth, ratcheted up the pop, and making a record full of sound and fury signifying very little. Missing from the picture this time around is McElroy, whose presence is sorely missed. Furthermore, Fernow only appears on a couple of tracks, leading me to feel - maybe without reason - that their absence is largely to blame for what is a lackluster album.
Although, lackluster may not be the right adjective. I wouldn’t want to give the impression that the album sounds dull or languid, rather the opposite is true. Nearly every song here is blown up into epic anthematic proportions, lacking entirely in subtlety. The beats pound, and the rhythms are frantic more often than not. Melodically, Eisold throws in just about every single 80s new wave influence imaginable, all on top of the predictable New Order wheelhouse of sounds. For example “Alchemy And You” sounds like a mash-up of “Substance”-era New Order and the English Beat…yes Virginia, those are ska horns you are hearing over that synthrock track. The problem with this approach is that “Light Years” barely lets the listener catch their breath long enough to feel anything but sensory overload. What made Cold Cave so great before was their ability to play with peaks and valleys, and make for dramatics through dynamics, rather than the frenzied pummeling of this record. It’s telling that the album’s finest track is “Burning Sage,” a song that starts out with an ominous bubbling synthesizer and minimal instrumentation. Eventually the song explodes with cold violence, but it takes its time getting there, and when it does you can actually appreciate the dramatic turn of events, because the band has allowed for the requisite space around the track’s climax to differentiate it from every other minute on this record.
Certainly there are also moments of guilty pleasure and enjoyable hooks throughout the record that prevent this from being a total wash, but next to “Love Comes Close,” it can’t compare. “Villains Of The Moon,” “The Great Pan Is Dead” and “Pacing Around The Church” are decent pop songs that I know I will return to from time to time throughout the year when the mood strikes me, but I doubt very much that I will listen to this album in full again once this review is done. Yet, even given this misstep of a record, I still believe in Cold Cave oddly enough. I can still hear promise even here. Eisold is more than a talented songwriter, it just seems that he is trying too hard to adopt a ‘bigger is better’ approach on “Light Years” that does a disservice to his songs.
"The Great Pan Is Dead"
"Villains Of The Moon"
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