The release of their latest album, Hold My Home, marks a shift in songwriting for the group. It’s something of a deliberate regression; an attempt to get back to basics and reconnect with the ideas and attitudes that culminated in their early releases. Rather than persevering with the extensive and laborious process of writing and recording an album as a successful band in this day and age, they’ve opted to take to songwriting as they would’ve earlier on in their careers.
It’s rather hard to imagine. History’s littered with instances of these unique musical undertakings. Sounds that spring up in environments that most would think are too hostile for them to possibly flourish in. Musical lineage is ordinarily traceable. A sound is spawned from one genre, and informed by another. Sonic elements are exchanged and fused in a suitable setting. So it’s strange when you consider the insular world that Cold War Kids was born in.
“We just had this big group of mutual friends in the LA area that were a bunch of artists or musicians. It was a big old group. It was good actually, because it meant you had about a hundred people that would come to your shows,” vocalist and pianist Nathan Willett recalls from his home in the US.
“I don’t know if the scene was thriving, because it was the only scene I’ve ever really been a part of. We weren’t in LA proper, we were kinda’ in the Long Beach area, so it felt like we were maybe a little left of centre,” he says. “We didn’t feel like we were trying to be aware of anything in any mainstream kind of way. We just kinda’ had labels and booking agents come in a really organic way, which in hindsight is pretty shocking, but at the time that was just the way it happened, and looking back, I think we were insanely lucky.”
Artists that make such a formidable mark on the musical landscape with their debut release are destined to always be remembered for that initial impact. When such a bold impression is made, finding a way to further yourself and maintain your audience’s interest is a task perhaps harder than making breaking through in the first place.
“The first record, as so often is the case with bands, is filled with songs that you’ve been playing live for a long time, for two years or so before you ever get a chance to record them,” says Willett. “So when you do go to record them, you record them quickly and it’s fun. Then beyond that, you start to learn how to make better use of your time in the studio.”
Still, with growth comes growing pains, and while their inception into the world of popular music might have been organic, their development, at least at times, has been considered and purposeful.
“It’s funny. You get to a point where you think, ‘Do we make changes?’, and if we do are they forced? Or false? Or do we just get in there and start writing the songs we write and not think too hard about it?” he contemplates. “We knew who we were pretty early on, so you think, ‘How do we keep the sound this group and continue to write songs and also expand and play with the space that we’ve got?”
There are plenty of us that sit on the outside looking in, envious of the opportunities afforded to successful musicians without considering the responsibility that goes with it, but there are inevitable and unavoidable difficulties that come with trying to turn your passion into a professional pursuit.
“From the very first record, and none of us would have anticipated this, but it has been a full time job,” says Willett. “Art is a strange thing, in that you want to be able to do it for a living, but you don’t want to be able to thinking about it professionally, you don’t want to think about making money. It’s not like real estate where the goal is to make the most money.”
So with some ten years experience in performing his balancing act, growing and developing their sound, Cold War Kids’ latest release, Hold My Home, has seen the group come full circle, blending the attitude that spawned their debut album with the benefits they’ve garnered from their previous successes to put together an album that attempts to build a unique contemporary sound on a foundation of traditional instrumentation.
“Inevitably, the record is going to be compared to the first one because it is probably the most direct and to the point record in many ways,” he reflects. “The last record only really came out a year and half ago or so, and we wanted to get this one out quickly and embrace all the advantages of having our own studio. I think it’s part of the modern age of being in a band. You don’t wait around in between records, because with the technology available you don’t need labour of it in the way that you might have had to in the past. So there’s an immediacy, lyrically and musically, that’s the way we approached it, we didn’t want it to sound or feel laboured over.”
Hold My Home certainly doesn’t feel laboured over; it seems a little more fluid than their other albums. The overall tone is less polished and the melodies are a little fuller and a touch less predictable. Polish has been forgone in order for the record to retain its initial character. After all, when you scrutinise every single element of a song, or an album, you run the risk of washing out or undermining the very elements that make it bold and interesting. It shares some fairly striking similarities with Robbers and Cowards and also, to a slightly lesser extent, their sophomore release Loyalty to Loyalty. There’s a real strong poetic element to the lyricism present on all three records. It’s never tenuous or exhausting. It’s self reflexive, and entirely believable.
Willett’s never been one to shy away from flexing his linguistic muscle. The subject matter of their music has always been one of their strengths, and in Hold My Home, it shines through once again, perhaps more than it has in other recent releases. The earnestness present in their more solemn tracks is something that can’t be manufactured: it’s the bi-product of genuine introspection; something Willett reveals is plaguing him in the time between keeping busy with music.
“These are the times, between finishing a record and beginning a tour that you think about it most. They’re also the times I try not to think about it,” he says. “You get too introspective and think, ‘Who am I? What am I doing with my life?’ I have spent my whole adulthood on tour, and does that mean I’m a child developmentally because I’m not in the same workplace structure that most of my adult friends are? Do I have too much freedom? Do I not use it well enough? Should I be trying to write a book? Or spend more time feeding the homeless? Or do more good in general? Or just work harder in general? It’s hard to not ask yourself too many questions that just stunt you and prevent you from doing anything at all. So how does that affect my life? I guess sometimes my cup runneth over and I’m so stuck that it’s impossible to do anything, and other times I’m up and I’m doing all I can do with everything I’ve been given. I’m usually somewhere between those two places.”
BY KEATS MULLIGAN
