Cold Cave
Barfly, London
04/11/2009

Remember what everyone thought The Bravery would be able to produce on the strength of ‘Unconditional’?  All rollercoaster neon guitars, glamorous vocals shot through with just a trace of Peter Murphy-ish languor, and pristine corners so pronounced they could have someone’s eye out – if The Fly remembers correctly… Well, for the most part, that’s Me My Head, that is, and they make for a thoroughly appetising aperitif to the evening. Good thing too, since headliners Cold Cave not only score highly in the cooler-than-cool stakes, but they’re also darkly awesome from the off. Sure, they might not actually come on in a swathe of billowing smoke, but, really, they might as well have: there’s a great deal of glistening stentorian hauteur happening here, and their close-knit all-in-a-row formation, wisely redolent of classic Kraftwerk and early Hot Chip, makes it impossible to distinguish whose bank of buttons is bringing what to the party and adds to the proceedings’ deliciously out-of-focus ambience.

Yet for all the subterranean drama, there’s clearly an amazing pop band at the heart of the Cave – it’s just that they take a very real relish in dragging the form down the most alluringly unpleasant of alleyways. ‘Love Comes Close’ might well share its melodic suss and deadpan sensibilities with prime New Order, for instance, not to mention enjoying the same collisionist instincts on which Big Audio Dynamite were built, but for every moment of delirious danceability or even outright prettiness there’ll be a distant industrial pounding or sudden miasma of viral fuzz polluting and pulsating to staggering effect, while leader Wes Eibold prowls with an intensity that flirts hypnotically with the absurd, and Caralee McElroy recaptures the unfettered urgency of Alice Glass at her most primal, making Cold Cave one of the most brilliantly blistering propositions of the age.  

Iain Moffat