COLD WAR KIDS "Robbers & Cowards" Downtown
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THEY CALL THEMSELVES "kids," but the Cold War Kids don't want to be mistaken for whiny emo brats. The Southern California quartet plays an off-kilter form of roots rock, based primarily in the blues and keyed to frontman Nathan Willett's straining tenor. The group's first long-player after three EPs, "Robbers & Cowards" has been compared to the work of American neo-retro acts such as the Hold Steady. But with its discordant accents and air of desperation, the Kids' style is closer to that of such cunningly ramshackle British acts as the Libertines and the Archie Bronson Outfit.
The Kids met while attending an evangelical Christian school, and such songs as "Hospital Beds" and "Sermons vs. the Gospel" (the album's hidden track) draw on biblical vernacular. Yet whatever their religious beliefs, the band members aren't proselytizing; their songs tend to be first-person, if not always autobiographical, and far from preachy. The unblinking "We Used to Vacation" assumes the persona of an alcoholic father, and the anguished "Hang Me Up to Dry" airs the dirty laundry of failed romance. Salvation may be on the Kids' ultimate agenda, but for now they're just battling -- awkwardly but compellingly -- through what the latter song terms "the muck and the mire."
-- Mark Jenkins
Appearing Wednesday at the 9:30 club with Tokyo Police Club.
