Cold War Kids - LoyaltyTo Loyalty

Mon 27th Oct, 2008 in Music Reviews

Loyalty To Loyalty’s accompanying making-of DVD, uniquely, contains interviews with the band members’ parents. These outside observers surmise that the group’s debut was an experiment to find their footing, and that this, their second, is a – œmake or break’ album.

Why the pressure? Well Cold War Kids managed to storm the blogosphere with their idiosyncratic songs about, well, Robbers & Cowards. Along with a captivating and energetic live show, that record catapulted them into the limelight. That their second album should be a strengthening of their position as a leading indie band is as much a point of pride as it is of purpose.

Opener Against Privacy addresses these issues with a kind of call-to-arms manifesto: “Forget ex-girlfriends/we want little governments/we tell stories/we want to get you to join in.” It’s an excellent microcosm of Cold War Kids’ original appeal – slightly political attitudes bolstered by music that’s at times experimental, sparse and surprisingly cathartic. At the same time, however, it highlights some of the problems of Loyalty To Loyalty – beginning with the fact that they’ve forgotten to sometimes “tell stories”.

The narrative drive of their first album – exemplified by Passing The Hat, We Used To Vacation and Hospital Beds – has only carried through to album two in the form of Golden Gate Jumpers: a wistful look at suicide jumpers against a jaunty ragtime piano. This isn’t to say that the album should follow the same formulas of Robbers & Cowards, their sharp lyrical sense remains – even if it’s not always story-driven. Such as on the uplifting Dreams Old Men Dream’s informed ruminations: “Thought I was laying in my garden with my hands deep in soil/but I was there on an island shooting flares at your boat/thought I was soothing like a violin confessing new rain/but I was piping like a trumpet frantic for fame.”

Musically, however, these anthemic aspirations don’t add up. While sometimes the sparse, rhythmic backdrops offer an intriguing juxtaposition, more often than not they leave a jarring disparity between the music and lyrics, such as on Every Man I Fall For. Still, abandon was a characteristic of their first album too. Featuring Nathan Willett’s bluesy howl, the four-piece’s style of unhinged indie-rock always sounded like a band flirting with the edges of control. Here, though, it seems at times as if they’ve tipped the scales.

Cuts such as Avalanche In B and On The Night My Love Broke Through seem to favour avant-garde freeform, in the style of Tom Waits without the musical reward. They instantly kill any momentum the tighter tracks, such as Something Is Not Right With Me or I’ve Seen Enough, have built up.

Perhaps it’s a case of quality control. While Loyalty To Loyalty is merely a track longer than their debut, it seems to lose pace towards the middle. The album could’ve really benefited from a culling of its more indulgent moments.

Make no mistake though – when Cold War Kids still hit it, they really hit it. They still sound quite unlike their contemporaries, but it seems that by putting so much pressure on themselves, conscious or not, they’ve lost sight of some of what made the group so special in the first place.