Cold War Kids: Loyalty To Loyalty

By: Dennis Cook

This is a serious piece of work. One of those records quietly loosed upon the world that captures and conveys deep truths about the sticky underside of the current climate, a thermometer jammed in society’s ass. This is fearful divining that shakes us shaman-like, the spearheaded intensity driving down to our marrow. Having spent a fair amount of time inside Loyalty To Loyalty (Downtown Music), it strikes me (all physicality and brutality intended) as kin to U2’s Joshua Tree, Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, Rage Against The Machine’s self-titled 1992 debut and the Patti Smith Group’s Radio Ethiopia – each in its own way a clarion call to recapture lost humanity, a warning flag when mankind has slid yet again into perilous drift and self-serving indulgence. While only Cold War Kids‘ second full-length, it heralds the arrival of a potentially tremendous band packed with wild, jagged energy and hard knock wisdom.

We don’t gamble/ We don’t play the stock exchange
We paint paintings for the stage
We will talk about welfare/ We will talk about sex
Talk about the pope in Prada shoes
Nobody gets upset
We’re waiting for your call

These opening lines now seem prescient in wake of the recent U.S. economic cratering. With poetic brevity they touch upon the hypocrisy of the 21st century money madness engulfing the planet, with the epicenter in America. Their simple statement of purpose – an intention to discuss the most direct, often profound human interaction/connection (sex), the helping of those in need (welfare) and the debunking of power centers (take that Pope-y) – evolves with piled upon lyricism reminiscent of Dylan in his holy rolling ’60s glory anchored to a musical character that’s like a tight knot in your gut. Fun it ain’t, at times, but each listen becomes more engaging, making me pound the steering wheel as they howl (in a most Ginsberg-ian way) or stomp my feet around the house as they rail against that which should be railed at. The last line quoted above speaks to this desire for engagement, this rush to connection interwoven into every fiber of Loyalty.

While well regarded as a live band, the fantastically tight quarters of this recording give everything a pleasant claustrophobia. It may be impossible to recapture the atmosphere in concert, and it’s strikingly different from anything else I’ve heard by Cold War Kids in the past. It’s worth noting that all this fiery exuberance for Loyalty comes from someone who was never really a fan before. They seemed decent enough, a mish-mash of modern rock and Billy Joel, the Piano Man in skinny jeans flying atop great energy, but nothing really grabbed me. Loyalty, on the other hand, shook me from the first listen.

Some of that is the make or break crooning of Nathan Willett, who’s wide swinging, none too careful singing suggests a gutter punk Harry Connick Jr. – gliding smoothness and warmly warbled enunciation. Early Bryan Ferry is another fine ancestor, especially in his more warped crackings. Willett is matched blow for blow by Jonnie Russell (guitar, vocals, percussion), Matt Maust (bass guitar), Matt Aveiro (drums) and Willett’s own piano and guitar work. To wit, “Every Valley Is Not A Lake,” which punctures youth’s egotism and naivety that dismisses older people, announcing flatly, “I will congratulate you as soon as you pay your own way/ Don’t mean to stick a pin in your shiny new balloon.” Musically, it’s a grand unfurling, the piano burbling menacingly as guitar itches at you like a swarm of gnats and the rumbling continues to build as Willett moans like a broken man lookin’ for a fix. Then, two minutes inside everything curls into a pop fist, a Kinks-like appendage that knocks your head swinging, happy for the bruise you wake up with. This type of passion can’t be faked or you can smell it.

Something is not right with me/ Something is not right with me
How was I supposed to know?
Something is not right with me
Trying not to let it show

Like My Morning Jacket’s “Run Thru” (“Oh shit, run/ Oh shit, run!”), the opening lines of “Something Is Not Right With Me” situate us in discontent’s center. The key to capitalism is to never allow full satisfaction, to sell the lie that whatever you get next is the thing that will make you happy, and most of us walk around feeling like we’ve never gotten it quite right, never all the way happy and never really knowing why. Well, when you grow up inside a cloud of dumbness that tells you that you can buy your way out of emptiness and sadness and ache then it makes sense to walk around thinking something is wrong. This track captures the clinging shame and disquiet most of us spend our days with.

Saucy boys, too, as on “Golden Gate Jumpers” where they sing, “I spy a black skirt on the rail/ straddling the bar like it’s a quarter a ride/ She’s scared to jump, but terrified to stay,” all set to a upright piano saloon stutter, tipsy charm spilling all over the sawdust until they go sweetly maudlin around the two-minute mark as the sauce hits their system and flushes out the tears and longing. The teetering delayed satisfaction of “Avalanche In B” follows, a distorted gurgle joining the wet-eyed sentiments that explode into potent frustration, some bite to join the whimper on “I’ve Seen Enough,” which roars out snarling, “How’s it gonna feel when summer ends?/ Out of money, out of friends?/ I’ve seen enough of nothing news!” Always, the music matches the lyrical mood, the whole moving like muscle under tight skin, alive and hot to the touch and probably ornery from being caged up.

I could go on and on. The gender bending of “Every Man I Fall For” earns Willett big points for being a dude willing to wander in this territory, one of the first since Bowie and Lou did a lil’ sword swallowing back in the day. There’s the delicious melancholy of “Dreams Old Men Dream,” which tells us, “I haven’t slept in weeks/ I’ve been up nights chasing my childhood with a pen” And there’s “On The Night My Love Broke Through,” a model of restrained, powerful playing paired with one of the finest 21st century gospel moods this decade:

On the night that my love broke through
Revelations that came unglued
Cell doors were opened/ guards stepped out of the way
Prisoners got one acre and one year’s pay
Flowers long since dead/ stiffened at the neck
Colors came back in green and yellow and in red

The high atmosphere company I place Cold War Kids in at the start of this review is almost a guarantee some will dismiss this as less than it is. How can a new band ever compete with such legends? Well, they weren’t always legends and one’s legacy is built one brick at a time. If Loyalty To Loyalty proves to be the cornerstone of this band then I assure you we’re in for some tremendous things.

Here’s the first video off the album for “Something Is Not Right With Me.”

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