Cold Cave

Sometimes the strongest sounds come from the strangest places: New York’s Cold Cave is led by Wesley Eisold, the former frontman of hardcore band Give Up the Ghost. After years of membership shifts that saw Xiu Xiu’s Caralee McElroy, Noveller’s Sarah Lipstate and Mika Miko’s Jennifer Clavin enter and exit the fold, Eisold is now accompanied by former Give Up the Ghost drummer Alex Garcia-Rivera and Dominick Fernow, one of the world’s most compelling noise musicians as Prurient.

But this isn’t hardcore, and it isn’t power electronics: This is brilliant dance music, resplendent pop, cut from a cloth of icons like Depeche Mode, New Order and The Cure and boosted by the immediacy of the members' roots. As Pitchfork editor in chief Mark Richardson noted of the band’s second album, the new Cherish the Light Years, “These songs and arrangements are like catnip for those who crave the bleak romantic end of new wave.” They’re really that good at being dark.

I first heard Cold Cave in 2008, while visiting Fernow’s legendary New York record store Hospital Productions. He played for me the Painted Nails seven-inch, an intriguing batch of three songs he was about to release on his label. I’ve talked to Fernow about a lot of records over the years, but he’s rarely seemed as excited as he was about those cuts—mutated dance music that was paradoxically urgent but reserved, displaying twin impulses to make immediate and interesting music. The possibilities for where Cold Cave might go seemed endless. Three years and two proper albums after that preview, Cold Cave has never been better: The hooks on Cherish the Light Years are inescapable. The production is unapologetic. And the performances come pushed with the same sort of intensity you might expect from a few hardcore and noise lords moving beyond their entry points. Cherish the Light Years is the sound of Cold Cave embracing its future by emboldening and invigorating its past. You won’t hear a more propulsive pop record this year. —Grayson Currin