If You Like Cold Cave, You Should Really Know About Old Seattle Band Satisfact

This week I wrote about Brooklyn band Cold Cave (opening for the Kills at the Showbox on Monday, sold out) and the resurgence of goth in indie rock. (And if you don't believe me, just hop in the Delorean and go to last night's amaaaazing Zola Jesus show at the Croc.) Anyway, if you dig Cold Cave, you would do well to know about Satisfact, a long-defunct local band (who I will still talk up given the slightest excuse, obvs) who were doing the whole mopey new-wave revival thing in a time and place where it was perhaps not very much not in style: Seattle in the mid-'90s.

The band was led by Matthew Steinke (also of Mocket and robotic electronic band Octant) and included a young Jeremiah Green (of Modest Mouse), Josh Warren, and Chad States (later of FCS North). Their essential album is their first album, The Unwanted Sounds of Satisfact (released in 1996 via local Up Records), and it's also the one that might appeal most to fans of Cold Cave. Play Cold Cave's "Catacombs" off the new album Cherish the Light Years back to back with Satisfact's "Oscillator" off Unwanted, and tell me you don't hear it: the downcast acoustic-guitar strumming, the thin synth lines, the dour singing. Satisfact may have come at this stuff from more of a post-punk angle, especially in their more aggressive, jerky rhythms--check out the above live video clip and songs like Unwanted stand-out "Unswitched." (The couple extant YouTubes of Satisfact lead you to the Faint, whose first two albums are also worth fucking with, but you would've figured that out for yourselves, right?)

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