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Listen to Cold War Kids with Rhapsody!
By Jonathan Zwickel
Let's hear it for good ol' blue-collar rock 'n' roll. While intellectual art jazz and heady electro groove have their moments, there's something undeniably reliable, almost soothing, about a traditionally raucous, four-bar blues-based band. Following in that legacy -- one established by forebears like The Who, The Band and Credence -- are Cold War Kids, Fullerton, California's favorite sons.
Not that the Kids sound similar to those pillars of classic rock -- their sound is far more minimal, jangly, and what bloggers and the mainstream press have vaguely dubbed "indie" than most of what you'd pick up on FM radio. But like those raw and honest rockers, Cold War Kids take a very basic, very cliché-riddled format and work it, hammer it out, and unravel from it their own unique, hands-on sort of sound. Basslines are simple and hypnotic, guitar is wiry and reverbed, vocals high and insistent, percussion full of tambourine and bits and bobs as well as martial drum beats. Songs are about your alcoholic neighbor up the street, the sleezeball who steals from the church collection plate, a lifer whose one violent mistake landed him in solitary confinement. It's engrossing stuff because it's so damnably human.
Theirs is not an immediately graspable twist, though. Cold War Kids certainly have a way with a razor-sharp hook -- the opening pair of tunes from Robbers and Cowards will grab hold of your ears with clever guitar lines and memorable choruses and won't let go. But with a style so fully realized and so fresh, there's bound to be a little resistance at first. Repeat listenings erode the first-spin jitters; every time you check into this Cold War world it becomes more and more familiar until you've absorbed a little something away from each song. Which, really, is an indicator of a potential classic. Taking pages from both the vintage set and more recent tale-spinners like the White Stripes and the dearly departed Morphine, Cold War Kids elevate the workingman's blues into glory-bound rock 'n' roll and pound out one of the year's most memorable debuts.
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