Release Date: April 5, 2011
Looking back, the funniest thing about those Hitler-in-Downfall parodies wasn’t the disparate gap between visuals and subtitles—it was how close to home it hit. If you’re reading this, you probably knew someone who flipped shit when they found out about the Pavement reunion long after tickets went on sale (everyone who got Stephen Malkmus’ Record Store Day 7-inch, please leave now).
Despite its sunny title, Cold Cave sounds similarly flustered on its sophomore LP.
Owing heavy debt to dour ’80s post-punk, Cherish the Light Years comes just behind the times, huffing and puffing in the midst of what may or may not be a ’90s revival. Dinosaur Jr. and Pavement are taking their scuzzbucket mantle back, while Yuck and The Pains of Being Pure at Heart do their respective strand of flannel-clad indie and swirling, cerebral alt-pop. Perhaps as compensation, opening track “The Great Pan Is Dead” comes out swinging from behind.
Over a pummeling beat, singer Wesley Eisold hollers “I will come running/Gunning through the years.” Cherish‘s nine songs show an almost violent urgency to be understood and accepted, a yearning shared by any 16-year-old outcast with a pen and a Bauhaus-loving older brother (and equaling Hitler’s demand for indie-cred supremacy in those videos). However, it’s a smoke screen that masks what feels like a formulaic and hollow approach to songwriting.
Eisold, the Trent Reznor of this sordidly mediocre affair, has a voice that rings out with focus-tested anguish. At times he yelps like Eve 6 everydude Max Collins, though he lacks Collins’ underrated gift for tangled wordplay. Other times show him emulating Marilyn Manson’s trapdoor croak, but running on fumes where Manson’s words drip big time sensuality.
If eyeliner could talk, it would say something like Cherish The Light Years’ trite lyrics, which sound like Eisold smashed open a Holden Caulfield piñata of diary scraps.
“Confetti” is the album’s first breather, but there’s still a lot going on musically, from a candy-coated keyboard line to funky bass. That’s not where the shame lies, however; “I feel guilty being alive,” Eisold drones, “when so many beautiful people have died.” The way he delivers the swaggering chorus, “Oh, I’m coming/When you see me, you should run and hide,” sounds comically deadpan by contrast, but there’s nothing funny about the creep-ass following line (“You look so good on the outside”).
In “Pacing Around The Church,” he sings “I’ll take pleasure in bringing your enemies to their knees,” and to call it juvenile high school poetry would give it too much credit; Eisold sounds too detached to make good on his promise, whereas the brooding teen romantic would at least have the courage to blog about his plan. These lyrics are just laughably bad in a way that makes you feel sorry for the guy in who will crack open this album in 2021 and wonder what the hell was I thinking?
A woman’s touch proves to be a relief. On closing track “Villains of the Moon,” where the album gets its title, female vocals break through like light in a wine cellar. Elsewhere, the Joy Division-esque clatter of “Burning Sage” burbles with rare, genuine intensity instead of the empty, whipped-up rage Cherish so often displays. And on “Alchemy and You,” ears will perk up at a perverse blending of synth-pop, new wave and ska—like A Flock of Seagulls wearing checkered shoes and stomping around a bowling alley basement show.
But if Cold Cave experiences any breakthrough success, it won’t be from novel genre-blending. “Catacombs,” with its strummy Manchester guitar sound and probably-not-coincidental rhymes of “haze” and “rain,” is Cherish‘s closest thing to a pop hit. Half a ‘stache immediately disappears for using a term like “wretched loves” to describe his peers, and Cherish‘s icky stalker theme continues with lyrics like “I’m still on the prowl behind you.” But wordy as it may be, one snippet of “Catacombs” hints at another theme: redemption.
“One day you’ll come back for me/That is the only reason why I’m a part of this dreadful scenery.” In one couplet, Eisold perfectly captures the itch of youth where you feel you could fly if your present environment wasn’t holding you back. In Cold Cave’s case, the only thing holding it back is its flustered dictator trying to keep up with the Joneses.
Cold Cave – Cherish The Light Years
- “The Great Pan Is Dead”
- “Pacing Around The Church”
- “Confetti”
- “Catacombs”
- “Underworld USA”
- “Icons of Summer”
- “Alchemy and You”
- “Burning Sage”
- “Villains of the Moon”
