The sixth full-length effort from the stalwart Florida alt-rockers, The Things We Can't Stop is Cold's first new collection of songs in eight years. Far removed from the harsh Korn- and Tool-influenced sound that earned the group commercial accolades in the early 2000s, the 12-track set hews closer to the dour post-grunge atmospherics of 2011's Superfiction. Commencing with the anti-bullying anthem "Shine," the first of a slew of midtempo rockers that flex both sonic and emotional heft, The Things We Can't Stop paces and frets, but unlike the group's early works, it does its best to bear the weight of the world instead of just raging against it.

It was a musical cocktail born in a marketing meeting: Two parts easy listening, one part jazz, a healthy dollop of conga drums, a sprinkling of bird calls, and a pinch of textless choir. Serve garnished with an alluring woman on the album jacket for best results. Liberty Records co-founder Si Waronker called it Exotica; the soundtrack for a mythical air conditioned Eden, packaged for mid-century, tiki torch-wielding armchair safariers. In the five years after Exotica—Martin Denny’s 1957 landmark Liberty debut—arrived, hundreds of other ethnographic forgeries washed up in record racks all over the U.S., bearing titles like Sophisticated Savage, Sacred Idol, Chant of the Jungle, Polynesian Paradise, Exotic Paradise, Taboo, Primitiva, Forbidden Island, Afrodesia, Hypnotique, Percussion Exotique, and a barrel’s worth of other portmanteaus. “All of those ica and itiva endings I came up with because I thought I was being cute,” Waronker said. “And I don’t know why, but nobody got wise.”