(le) poisson rouge

A strange thing happened when former DFA engineer Eric Broucek lifted the heavily-distorted outer layers of an early "Love Comes Close" mix: Cold Cave founder/frontman Wesley Eisold realized he could actually sing. Not that he couldn't hold a tune in his previous pair of post-hardcore bands, Give Up the Ghost and Some Girls. It's just that they required a healthy amount of shouting/screaming, not anything alluding to the pitch-dark pop tunes of Nitzer Ebb and New Order. And now that Cold Cave's shifted from the experimental solo singles of its Cremations compilation to a consistent power trio that includes Caralee McElroy (ex-Xiu Xiu) and noise demigod Prurient, Eisold is fully embracing his long dormant love of dance music for people who aren't afraid of the dark.

Matador's recent reissue of Cold Cave's self-released—and instantly out-of-print—Love Comes Close LP is fascinating on several levels. For one thing, Eisold succeeds by actually sounding as morose and melancholic as his lyric sheet. That said, tracks like "The Trees Grew Emotions and Died," "Youth and Lust" and "Heaven Was Full" aren't downers so much as strictly-analog synth pop that avoids the look-out-weekend bent of bands like the Faint. As Eisold says in Cold Cave's bio, "I dread clubs but I love the music they play in them." So get out your smoke machine and strobe light; it's time to dance with one's self while carrying a weathered copy of Baudelaire.

Cult Of Youth is a New York City based Neo-Folk band.