Love Comes Close

You have to admit it’s almost cute the way the title of Cold Cave’s first full-length release riffs on the Joy Division song title, “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” while the track itself adorns a crisp, drum-machine dance beat with gloomy, ghostly synthesizers, melancholy guitars and Wes Eisold’s soul-mining, Ian Curtis-like vocals. Joined here by Dominick Fernow (Prurient) and Caralee McElroy (late of Xiu Xiu), Eisold wears his influences well (and proudly), and exploring his music will take some music fans back several decades, not only to Joy Division but to Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, and all the other original industrial-rock purveyors that emerged from the primordial punk pond — he works with some of these seminal figures in his publishing endeavor, Heartworm Press. Imminently more accessible than the gritty Cremations — a collection of early odds and ends — Love Comes Close is less corrosive, more melodic and dance-floor driven. Several songs (and especially the title track) offer up moments of gloriously dark and brooding pop that admirably pay homage to those who came before.