Cold War Kids interview
Cold War Kids
Peristroika
Countless acts accumulate an overwhelming buzz on debut albums, only to never be heard from again. Defiantly, Cold War Kids plan to ripen beyond mere flavor-of-the-month status on the new Loyalty To Loyalty (Downtown).
Appearing: October 11th at Vic Theatre in Chicago.
Though only three years have elapsed since the Fullerton, California foursome released their Mulberry Street EP and quickly became a blogosphere craze, that’s a lifetime today. As rapidly as Cold War Kids seemed to have arrived, it was actually on a cautiously germinating incline, which included several independent EPs to support an exhaustive concert schedule.
“We were actually touring non-stop before the record deal and the height [of Internet attention],” verifies vocalist/keyboardist/guitarist Nathan Willett, phoning from his Long Beach home. “One blog could write about us one night in New Jersey, and the next night someone in New York could read about us and go to the show. It kept building that way, so it was kind of all-at-once in that sense, but it was very gradual from our perspective, and we have no regrets about the way we came into the public eye.”
Beyond dropping on the laps of indie rockers, Cold War Kids also became the subject of a label bidding war, eventually inking with Downtown Records (mid-major home to Gnarls Barkley, Art Brut, and Chicago’s Wax On Radio) for its 2006 full-length debut, Robbers & Cowards. Willett looks at the company as being a source for uninhibited creative freedom, but also a somewhat anonymous entity that has the prominence of massive distribution without the typical trappings of the major-label machine.
“We were in a super-fortunate position where lots of people wanted to be our girlfriend two years ago, and, at that time, it was really wild for us because we didn’t know anything about labels and we had to learn everything at once,” he explains. “There were a lot of indie labels [that courted us] with bands we have kind of grown up with, but we realized the bands we loved on those labels had been there since the beginning and we were more impressed with their history. Downtown has a really interesting roster, and as a label, desires for the bands to have their own identity, not vice versa, whereas in a case like Matador, people buy the record because it’s on the label and not necessarily because of the band. As we were recording Loyalty To Loyalty, they were very hands-off and barely heard the record when we were making it, but were still there for the moral support.”
While some labels would want a mere repeat of round one (which, in the case of Robbers & Cowards, yielded the single “Hang Me Up To Dry” and critical comparisons to Spoon, The Walkmen, and The White Stripes), Loyalty To Loyalty is noticeably different. Outside of the group’s indie aesthetic, the 13-track collection is wrapped around brooding instrumental sweeps, a bluesy undercurrent, plus a sparse, low-end flavor that migrates away from the slicker sound of the first.
“This one is round, softer, and warmer on the production side and musically it’s more mature,” Willett contends. “There’s a tighter vocal dynamic while giving the drums and bass a lot more room to breathe. It’s kind of got more highs and lows, plus I especially feel far more proud of this one lyrically than I did the last one, which [again uses] narrative storylines, but digs deeper than the first.”
— Andy Argyrakis
For the rest of the story, grab the October issue ofIllinois Entertainer, available free throughout Chicagoland.
