★★★★★
Cold Wars Kids are the first to admit that, for them, style is almost as important as sound. Co-founded by a graphic designer, Matt Maust, the Fullerton, Calif. quartet has spent the past two years crafting a truly multi-media persona, which carries through the groups' T-shirts, website, and album art into its songs. As the Cold War Kids' name suggests, it is a dark, gritty image, one rooted in a cold, dark wartime America...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
Cold War Kids' third full-length effort Mine Is Yours comes packaged with a John Cassavetes quote about a volatile marriage, setting up the album's thematic thread. Whereas their previous releases (2006's Robbers & Cowards and 2008's Loyalty to Loyalty) took on subjects from suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge to being a prisoner on death row, broken relationships and their effects are the focus on this album. It's a move that represents aging, but doesn't necessarily mean progress...
- www.americansongwriter.com
2013-04-25
★★★★★
Dear Miss Lonelyhearts opens with a punch. Miracle Mile is an outstanding track, pounding drums and thumping piano pulse away under lead singer Nathan Willett's soaring vocals, the whole effect is very Florence And The Machine. It sounds, right up the front, like they are looking for their big radio hit. This album, the band's fourth, contains that idea as an undercurrent for most of its playing time unfortunately - it wants to be liked...
- www.beat.com.au
2013-04-25
★★★★★
Some bands are trendy. Cold War Kids are borderline schizophrenic. They began in the mid-'00s playing blues-gritty indie rock but ditched that sound for clumsy Springsteenian sweep. They've added a Bowie/New Order gloss for their fourth LP, which nicks its title and concept from Nathanael West's 1933 novel about an L.A. advice columnist. On the title track, Nathan Willett quotes letters from readers and collapses in a glum puddle: "I've given up on explaining sorrow...
- www.rollingstone.com
2013-04-23
★★★★★
There's a lot to be said for mediocre music. There's plenty out there that we love, that we turn to for junk food comfort, that we like purely because it satisfies a basic craving. We need an abundance of mediocrity to make a nice cushion between the good and the bad. We like mediocrity because it's pleasant and inoffensive. But we are too quick to fall into the Lake Wobegone trap, where everything is somehow above average...
- www.noripcord.com
2013-04-08
★★★★★
Cold War Kids have never been a band particularly adored by music buffs. They've been accused of bandwagon-jumping left, right and centre for their (admittedly far from unique) bluesy-indie-rock sound, sidelined for being a "religious" band and even labelled "drunken Jeff Buckley karaoke" by coveted tastemakers Pitchfork in their review of the band's second album...
- www.thelineofbestfit.com
2013-04-11
★★★★★
Goto commentsLeave a commentShare After the War Downtown Fullerton heroes and Long Beach residents, Cold War Kids, is THE band that "made it" outside of the L.A./Silverlake circuit in Southern California. Their past releases have spawned many copycats and inspired other great artists in the past five years, but their sound is a unique blend of bluesy pop and catchy, thoughtful So Cal indie. Dear Miss Lonelyhearts is a faithful reprisal of their signature sound with some surprises along the way...
- www.mxdwn.com
2013-04-08
★★★★★
Even Cold War Kids' vocalist Nathan Willett can admit that the band's last release, 2011's Mine Is Yours, was a letdown. "It was over-thought and over-produced," the frontman recently admitted . For fans, clinging to Cold War Kids since their heavily hyped 2006 debut felt similar to refusing to bid a show like Weeds farewell; it had faltered since Nancy Botwin set fire to her little slice of suburbia, but inexplicably, you couldn't help but stick around...
- consequenceofsound.net
2013-04-08
★★★★★
Downtown Dear Miss Lonelyhearts is Cold War Kids' fourth album and the Southern California rock band has managed to retain exactly what initially compelled fans on their 2006 debut Robbers & Cowards. That howling blues sensibility has lingered throughout the band's discography, even as the musicians, who are joined by a new guitarist on this disc, explore novel sonic influences. Opener "Miracle Mile" is a raucous blues number, full of jangly guitars and singer Nathan Willett's yelping croon...
- www.relix.com
2013-04-04