I’m not like Cold War Kids. I go days without noticing messages my wife has left me around the house, you know the sort of thing, Can you make sure there’s a babysitter for so and so, or we need more milk – that sort of thing. Or I see this new shop that’s opened but in actual fact it’s been there for months, or there’s a huge argument in the street as I wander past, oblivious.
Cold War kids are much more observant. They take these everyday situations (ok, maybe not quite as everyday as needing babysitters and milk, but lets let it run) and turn them into these sort of little gems of songs, the kind of songs you can sit down, relate to, and love.
Their fourth album, Dear Miss Lonelyhearts, came out earlier in the year, but was their first with new guitarist, former Modest Mouse and Murder City Devils man Dann Gallucci. Of the album, singer Nathan Willett says “We were shaken up, ready to let certain songs go further than before by trying new styles and arrangements, while keeping others sparse and caring more about the finished product and less about how we got there”
From the album comes ‘tuxedos’ and the band have recently released this lovely, slightly sad, slightly poignant video. It traces the story of the song, a beautifully observed vignette about loneliness, but also about hope and dreams. It has this sort of stripped down, almost John Lennon quality bout the song, and it creeps out of the shadows as it goes on, adding layers until it reaches this huge, moving vocal climax in the middle of the song, after which it takes on this sort of ethereal, almost gospel like quality.
It’s lovely and, even for someone as unobservant as me, unmissable.
Www.coldwarkids.com
