Cold War Kids remain all mixed up. The Californian band appeared in 2006 bearing tasty blues-rock indie that leapt about in the same places Jack White hangs out. There was lots of media blather about their being a Christian band since most of them had met at the private Christian college, Biola University. Then it turned out they had much more complex and conflicted theological perspectives than were easy to sum up in music mag pull-quotes.
Their first two albums were lively, punchy efforts in the blues-indie vein but on their last one, Mine is Yours, they appeared to be strugging to find something new to do, yet not finding it. So it is with Dear Miss Lonelyhearts, although with the caveat that the best of it runs their creativity into completely new zones.
The downside - around two thirds of the album, unfortunately - is that it appears to be aimed squarely at stadium audiences who’ve been digging The Killers and/or Arcade Fire. It’s bombastic stuff, pumped up by synths and tribal rising drums worthy of Snow Patrol, overlaid with lead singer Nathan Willett’s keening, quavery, falsetto-flecked voice. Where once such voice-breaking added emotional heft to the band’s blues stew, now it just reminds us that said tone is the default setting for 90 per cent of indie bands signposting vulnerability in post-Jeff Buckley music-land.
However, there’s a weird adventurous spirit in some songs that offers real kicks. The title track is a fantastic piece, where all the elements they’ve been fiddling about with ineffectively – indie, blues, stadium pop, ecclesiastical atmospherics – come together brilliantly over a stately rolling drumbeat. It has real dramatic power. And “Fear and Trembling” is quite something too. It starts almost as a stately pleading blues but descends into spooked off-piste doom-jazz dissonance, replete with howling sax and much more. If only more of the album was like this.
Watch Cold War Kids perform "Miracle Mile" acoustically at SXSW 2013
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