We’ve been waiting patiently for the new album by Cold Cave, having devoured the patchy but quietly awe-inspiring Cremations comp which came out a few weeks ago. We’re pleased to report that it’s finally here.

Love Comes Close, alluded to in our recent profile of Cold Cave, is a far poppier set than the band’s early releases on Hospital Productions had led us to expect. The title track is nothing so much as the sound of 80s Britain, somewhere between the electronic pulsations of Depeche Mode and the melancholic jingle-jangle of The Cure. ‘Life Magazine’ is reverb-soaked techno-pop of the highest order while ‘The Laurels of Erotomania’ – recently licensed for a 7" release by the none-more-hip Big Love label – finds CC mainman Wesley Eisold crooning in his Curtis-cum-Gahan baritone over a thrumming John Carpenter-style synthscape. ‘Youth And Lust’ is immaculately gothy hi-NRG, coming over like a lost collaboration between TG and New Order.

For this album Eisold is joined by collaborators including Xiu Xiu’s Caralee McElroy and Dominic ‘Prurient’ Ferlow as well as J. Benoit and cult writer Max G. Morton. The result is one of the most fearsome – and camp – albums of the year, the most fully-realized and convincing update of the high-minded, doom-obsessed industrial pop aesthetic that we’ve heard in an age. We’re not saying it’s the album of the year so far – but it’s up there. Wicked sleeve too.

Tracklist:

1. Cebe And Me

2. Love Comes Close

3. Life Magazine

4. The Laurels of Erotomania

5. Heaven Was Full

6. The Trees Grew Emotions And Died

7. Hello Rats

8. Youth & Lust

9. I.C.D.K.