"Rooftops & Alleyways" | An Interview With The Cold War Kids

Story by Mitch McCann 

| Published Oct 25, 2011

Indie rock icons the Cold War Kids have spent the better part of a decade creating soulful music with cryptic lyrics. Their debut “Robbers & Cowards” gave the Cold War Kids a coveted sound that earned them a spot on everyone’s ‘To Watch’ lists. Two albums and eight EP’s later, the Kids find themselves at a time of unprecedented exposure for the band.

Headline gigs and prime spots on festival circuits have brought lead singer Nathan Willett and his rag-tag chums into the spotlight as third album “Mine Is Yours” became an ultimatum for fans. The band tweaked their makeshift, dirty arrangements into something more polished and grand, but not everyone came along for the ride.

Songs like 2006’s “Hospital Beds” and “Saint John” seem like a thing of the past listening to spacious arrangements “Royal Blue” or “Finally Begin,” which ring more Coldplay-meets-White-Stripes than “Robbers & Cowards” did. “Mine Is Yours” was a maturation of the band’s sound, and while it was the next logical step forward for the band’s sound and lyrical ambition, it rang as dishonest in the eyes of some who wished to see the band remain as underground as their elder bridge-and-tunnel compositions.
With intentions only to write what needed to be said, Willett and the rest of the Kids released “Mine Is Yours” and were met with skepticism by some and adoration from others, leaving the band’s identity somewhat uncertain. After Seeds sat down with frontman Willett, the Cold War Kids seem to have reaffirmed their convictions and are remaining stalwart amongst a sea of cynics.

Seeds: Compared to most bands, you guys have stayed pretty active since your album debuted, with you guys having played festivals like Bonnaroo and ACL. Bring us up to speed on the Cold War Kids.

NW: Like you said, we’ve been touring and trying to get home and get a little perspective on things. We all were just in the process of having a lot of new material and thinking about how to record and trying to get creative with it. That’s all very vague, but we’ve got some things in the pipeline.

Seeds: You mentioned “Fashionable” [“Mine Is Yours” B-side]. How often do you dig deep in your catalogue and revisit old tunes like “Expensive Tastes” or something from “Mulberry Street” [EP]?

NW: We do a pretty good job of mixing it up, playing a lot of early tunes. We have three records, but we have so many songs that are not on those records. It’s funny, because we have to stop and think “Will anybody have any idea what this song is? Did we even release this?” [Laughs] Certain songs you play most every night; otherwise we can vary it, we mix it up, and that’s fun.

Seeds: There’s a funny thing in the entertainment industry where artists feel as though they need to write broadly to appeal to the whole audience. What a lot of artists discover is that what they used to consider personal, maybe wasn’t as unique as they thought. “Mine Is Yours” being a more personal record, have you gotten any of those responses on this record?

NW: In some ways this record is really autobiographical, but I realized a while later that, while it is that, it isn’t heart-on-the-page personal. It’s poetic and maybe even a little cryptic. While the music is the thing that hits you first, lyrics are the things that can make or break it (for me). I walk out after shows and talk to kids, and while I’m always a little sheepish to talk about lyrics with fans, but there’s moments where people have a cool take on them. Especially the new material. I’m appreciative to hear how people have identified with it.

Seeds: Some records have a certain meaning to them. They might be love letters or just a big ‘screw you’ to critics, and I know artists like to leave their work open to interpretation, but I’m wondering what exactly “Mine Is Yours” means to you.

NW: I do have a hard time trying to summarize the record. I always bite off more than I can chew trying to say something grand about it. This record is a very un-cynical record. In a way it’s a huge struggle to not be cynical in a very cynical world. With so much music it’s easy to be really angry at something and direct that energy against a person or experience. [“Mine Is Yours”] is not like that at all. It’s praising some of the lesser talked-about virtues, things like sharing or humility in a relationship. “Skip the Charades” is one of my favorites lyrically in that it’s very literal, let’s just get past the charades and rituals of relationship and get to the real core of it. I think that’s representative of the record as a whole.

Seeds: I got really attached to “Cold Toes,” which I thought made a beautiful anchor for the album and which seems like “Bulldozer’s” gritty, spontaneous opposite. “Bulldozer” is methodical, shout it from the rooftops whereas “Cold Toes” strikes as an impromptu, alleyway kind of feel...

NW: “Bulldozer” is a song that is so unique for us and is really one of my favorites lyrically. As I was writing it, I had the image of a bulldozer crushing an old, dilapidated house - running right through it. Destroying it to build up something new there. That seemed like a metaphor for being in a point in a relationship [when you] destroy either your old self or the idea you’ve built up of that person. Whatever that decaying house is, you have to destroy it. In the studio we wanted [“Bulldozer”] to be really sparse and grand at the same time

...And “Cold Toes,” you’re right, those songs are a perfect opposite in many ways. That one we had for a really long time and something about it wasn’t quite working, and we didn’t know why. We ended up just saying take everything you’re doing and forget it. [Bass player Matt] Maust changed his bass line a little bit and we played differently around it, and I was on this Hammond B-3 organ where I wasn’t really sure what I was playing. The song was far and away the most spontaneous and fun, and it was live in a sense. Lyrically that song meant a lot to me; it’s supposed to be about dreams of infidelity, in ways I wish I had spelled that out, but I like that it has some mystery to it.

Seeds: Like you said, everything has this grander approach. The songs feel more open, like they have more room to breathe on this record. Was that something you came to with your producer? What brought the need for that aesthetic on the record?

NW: It was a matter of having spent so much time touring, and while making the second record [“Loyalty to Loyalty”] we recorded really quickly and then toured it heavily. We thought if we’re going to tour a record this long, I want to be more deliberate and thoughtful about the arrangement and structure of the songs... do things that weren’t necessarily instinctual, that we could step back from and say, “what if we made that chorus longer, what if we took that section out,” or whatever, where we could have that bird’s eye view of things instead of throwing it against the wall.

Seeds: When the album came out there was quite a split reaction. There were those who thoroughly liked what you had done, and done differently, and then there were those who complained about missing the old stuff. Now that you’ve toured on the record, there’s been time for the dust to settle. Have the skeptics’ responses softened?

NW: Early on I was disappointed by some reaction to it. You can read something and think, “wow, people don’t like this,” and then after touring it for a year it’s a totally different experience. Now people are really familiar with “Fashionable,” which was a 7-inch B-side to the record. Those are the things that make it really exciting for me. I thought maybe things really will change for us on this record; maybe we’re gonna lose some people early on. I wasn’t thinking about the record as “new songs versus old songs,” it just all came together. It’ll be interesting to go from here, [considering] how the audience has shifted and everything. I think, if anything, this taught me this incredible thing, which is that our fans who have gone to shows in the last year really like our band -- and I think that is ultimately what every band should aspire to be. I feel more confident than ever in our band.