Like other, er, distinctive bands such as Clap Your Hands Say Yeah or Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly., the vocal style dictates that Cold War Kids are best taken in bite-size doses. Except the Californians’ frontman Nathan Willet is an acute case, flitting between the stylings of Jeff Buckley and Turin Brakes but ending up with the same strained whine as South Park’s Mr Hanky The Christmas Poo.
It’s a tragedy, because this surface stain obscures the intricate art underneath that any fan of CYHSY or The Raconteurs would appreciate. Opener ‘We Used Vacation’ is their ‘Steady As She Goes’: the lead single which draws you into an album that has many more entities to love – and love even more.
‘God, Make Up Your Mind’ is a piano-smattered leftfield ballad that explodes halfway through; ‘Hospital Bed’ recounts the mullings of a terminal patient (“Bring your buckets by the dozens/Bring your nieces and your cousins”); and ‘Hang Me Up To Dry’, which uses laundry as an analogy, is an alt-indie anthem whose throbbing, repetitive rhythm is covered with the anthemic call: “Now hang me up to dry/You wrang me out too, too, too many times”. Worthy of single of the year already.
If only Willet didn’t scare off all dogs within a five mile radius, The Cold War Kids would be on to a winner.