New York – Every month, Red Bull puts on this concert series called Red Bull Sound Select, where they get a collective of local curators in a city to put on a show where they introduce new bands they think people should hear about. The latest Sound Select show was curated and hosted by East Village Radio, featuring Cold Cave, Nothing, Young Boys, and Bad Girlfriend. For their goal of connecting new artists to fans, they nailed it.
Cold Cave is Wesley Eisold’s darkwave synth industrial pop project, who already has an impressive cult following. Having been in hardcore punk bands American Nightmare, Give Up the Ghost, and XO Skeletons, Eisold clearly had an accumulated following of fans who were happy to come out and support any project he was part of. For this show Cold Cave was a duo, so Eisold was free to mostly thrash around the mic and lull the crowd with his deep voice. He’s said in interviews that besides wanting to make his own music to sing to, being born with only one hand left him with fewer instrument options, so synths, drums machines, and computers made sense for his move to more electronic music.
As a result of that, his band isn’t so much about music as it is about not having a choice. Combining that with his hardcore punk past, Eisold connects a style that is sometimes the only way to wallow with darkly poetic lyrics that make sense. This was already the most connected performance of the night, and when he jumped into the crowd, he immediately disappeared in a sea of fans flinging themselves on him. When he made it back up on the stage, there was nothing but hands in the air, surrounding him as he bent over into the faces in front of him. That was kind of magic.
The energy had already been building up though, from the little bit of rock magic that Philly punk band Nothing started right before. These guys were the loudest and most mesmerizing, and guitarists Domenic Palermo and Brandon Setta were the best guitarists on stage that night. They ripped out some punk energy under a heavy layer of shoegaze blasting out of a wall of amps. And apparently that wasn’t even as loud as their show normally is. When Domenic took a dive into the crowd he was also immediately surrounded by the sea, with him at the bottom still wailing on his guitar. Nothing’s music is about creating a feeling, that’s like a deep heavy but also like being shot through to feel lighter. I hope they also inspired a feeling in others that night to grab some of theirmusic, because Nothing is kind of amazing.
Cold Cave will be supporting none other than Nine Inch Nails on their European spring tour. Nothing has a US tour lineup with Weekend, who is also really awesome live.
Cold Cave Photo By Ivan Kleymenov
