The Great Cold Cave Is Alive

I try not to talk about music as the main focuses of these things as:

1. I write a lot about music.

2. I could just keep going and not write anything out of my wheelhouse.

But, I'm going to break that guideline to talk about Cold Cave's new song, The Great Pan Is Dead. Cold Cave is Wesley Eisold, vocalist of American Nightmare and post-legal battle, Give Up The Ghost. Dude has always wanted to write love songs at high volume, energized with the hardcore punk car battery, and that's what distinguished American Nightmare from its peers. This is a guy that wrote, literally, I believe that when I'm gone, my love will live in song, in a song called am/pm.

The band broke up, but not before the legend of American Nightmare had taken hold. What was left in the debris were three full length records, and errata of some of the most straightforward discs about loss and love that the group could come up with. And I'll admit, the first time I saw American Nightmare lyrics I nearly cried. This was, for the record, in a computer science class and I probably was supposed to be paying attention to the professor.

Oops.

I liked it so much, I ended up using an American Nightmare lyric in every Overkill piece I did, a couple years ago, in addition to scratching the lyrics into a desk during English class, but enough talk.

The Great Pan Is Dead does it, realizes Eisold's desire to marry the most earnest love lyrics he is capable of writing with the right kind of accompaniment, the soaring, shimmering electronics of the 80's, fed through a post-Sleigh Bells Kill Everyone Within Earshot volume. Of course, it's undeniably Eisold's lyrics, his themes carry over. There's two lovers set against a world gone dim.

All I see in you and me

is a light in the dark of humanity. (AN's Farewell)

I've seen people with no substance

filling themselves with substances,

but honey child:

There's us.

There still is. (Cold Cave-The Great Pan Is Dead)

There's a hardcore punk style promise that whatever holds the singer back will be overcome.

I will come running,

gunning through the years

hunting heart

crushing fear...(Cold Cave-The Great Pan Is Dead)

What seals it for me is the promise that friends will be seen again, somehow.

And if not above,

i'll see you below.

I'm off to see Darkest Hour. The gig starts at 9:30, there's one opener, but I know Italians and if that gig starts before 10, I'll eat my hat. Bye!

I would be terrible if I didn't give you the song, right? Here's the song. Play loud. Obv.