Tuesday, FADER editor Matthew Schnipper highlights an underappreciated recent release he thinks we need to know about. This week it’s Cold Cave‘s Trees Grew Emotions and Died EP. Buy it soon in full singles collection glory from What’s Your Rupture? and read Schnipper’s thoughts on it after the jump.

Grown men worship Wesley Eisold. Watch this video of his band American Nightmare (who later changed their name to Give Up the Ghost) playing in 2001. Those people still care. Some of them even like his new band, Cold Cave. I saw them play on Sunday night, opening for Crystal Stilts and Comet Gain. They looked like they were in the Gestapo, three men at keyboards, two in long coats in a frozen stance, one with tattoos everywhere, including upside down crosses on both sides of his neck. (And a woman with a tank top playing guitar.)

But this is Eisold’s project, he wrote and performed all the music on their debut EP, The Trees Grew Emotions and Died. That was also the best song they played on Sunday, boosted the boom and spiked the pop. The rest of the songs were so, well, cold. Which is appropriate. What makes a man switch to such bleakness? Ok you see these people on the front cover there? On the back they are naked. Personally I think that is kind of weird.

People loved American Nightmare. I don’t think they’ll feel the same about Cold Cave. You can’t mosh to Cold Cave. Depending on where you were you might be able to dance. I think I nodded my head. I kept expecting him to say “Oh you’ve got blue eyes, oh you’ve got green eyes.” But there was no drummer, no bassist, not even much singing, just the hard clang of words from his mouth. Earlier that day I read about Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes’ son killing himself, the sad culmination of a strong, quiet life encompassed in an ethereal depression. It made me bummed. What happened to Eishold to get him to coldness? But, then again, he’s sharing and that’s a start.

I stopped listening to the Holocaust music I was writing about last week, it was making me too sad. I went to see Cold Cave after a barbecue. It was so windy on Sunday but their backyard blocked it out. I took my coat off and hung it on a nail reserved for rusted garden tools. I ate fresh vegetables, tubbed guacamole, a little bit of chili. I only lived a block away so my commute home was short. I made a little bit of pasta, mixed it with pesto my mom brought me. And then I went to see Cold Cave. You know, it didn’t make me feel bad. I liked it. Does that mean I understood it wrong?

It was weird to watch them, almost awkward. The guy with the beard looked so serious on purpose. Eisold just looked staunch. If you ruin someone’s day on purpose do you get a pox from the heavens? What if they wanted their day ruined? Or is that like a double negative?

Yesterday I saw a guy on the street and wondered why he was wearing a scary mask. Then I kept looking and it was just his face. That ruined both our days. Does it cancel out?