Review: Cold War Kids, Mine is Yours
The album cover of Mine is Yours displays what one might expect of the has-been indie hard-hitters: a sloppily written note scrawled across a plain white background. Cold War Kids made their career out of the loud, edgy, blues-laden improvisation of fuzzy guitars, and the infectious passion of lead singer Nathan Willet. The main problem with Mine is Yours might be the fact that it contains none of these crucial elements. Instead, one wouldn’t be entirely at fault if you popped in the CD and mistook the album for the latest Daughtry release.
Willet appears to have caught the highly infectious, and ultimately fatal, American Idol disease. It is clearly evident from his tone that he has either spent a lot of money on voice training or many hours singing in the shower since the release of Loyalty to Loyalty. I have nothing against a classically trained voice, but it is clear here that Cold War Kids have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Willet now resembles the dozens of other half-enthused crooners played routinely by Top 40 radio stations.
You’ve got to speculate what was going through the Cold War Kids’ heads when approaching this album. Perhaps the band thought replacing Willet’s occasionally hoarse, nasal voice with a carefully honed one, with delicate tremolos and sweeping arpeggiotic improvisations, would catapult them to the arena-rocking every 16-year-old who picks up a guitar fantasizes over. Perhaps they are getting old, and the exuberant wails from their early releases just make them grumpy, like my parents when forced to endure my choice of music on the way to school in 10th grade. Or maybe the creative wellspring that produced classic tracks like “Hang Me Up to Dry” and “There’s Something Not Right with Me” was simply a lot shallower then we expected.
Whatever their motivations, one thing is for certain about Mine is Yours, and that’s its foot-tapping prowess. That is, tapping your feet waiting for it to be over. The melodramatic emotional swings of the ultimately soulless effort inspire such immense boredom it is actually difficult to sit through the entire 45 minutes.
What Cold War Kids need to do with their next album, if their new-found sound (cough*disease*cough) doesn’t kill their career where it stands, is to get those devilish Universal executives from whispering in their left ear, stop trying to broaden their appeal, and go back to being the Cold War Kids. The damage done to Willet’s voice can be undone, by either switching to unfiltered cigarettes or just removing the voice-correction software from studio computers.
Though I may sound harsh (even mean) in my critique of Mine is Yours, I assure you it’s all done in love. Cold War Kids were one of my early indie forays, and listening to them lose their main asset, authenticity, is almost as painful as it would be to watch LCD Soundsystem give up music to sell Sham-wows. I hope, somehow, that these new-found big-shots hear my public cry and heed my advice. Hopefully I won’t be drowned out by the inevitable screeching of 14-year-old girls that comes with releasing an album of this caliber.
-Dave Greek, host of dc ba Mondays 9-10pm
“Whatever their motivations, one thing is for certain about Mine is Yours, and that’s its foot-tapping prowess. That is, tapping your feet waiting for it to be over.”
Zing. Totally agree. CWK, please go back to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIZmsviQl3s
And is it just me, or is the album art just a poor man’s High Violet?
How dare you insult Daughtry. Get out of my country.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqT4VnnEU0M
omg lol @ that screaming girl
but yeah, dude’s voice sucks
I disagree about their sound changing as a result of releasing on the Universal label. Note that the 2006 “We Used To Vacation” EP was released under V2, which is a Universal subsidiary. What I see the CWK doing with this album is reaching out desperately for a different sound. This is an effort that I fully support – Willet’s poetic lyrics are still deep and profound, but if a band does not find a new path instrumentally at some point, they will fall into a repetitive cycle. This may be a stretch, but look at how the Beatles grew as a band – this is a sign that a band wants more out of their music than simply notes and words.
The Beatles went from pop-music to various experiments in rock.
Cold War Kids went from edgy rock to pop music.
I don’t see the parallel here.
i really liked their first album, and similarly to dave, was unenthused from there on out. though I wonder if that should be a surprise. perhaps that first album was complete from an artistic standpoint and couldn’t really be expanded upon
Maybe I’m just projecting my disappointment with “Mine is Yours” and my hopefulness for their next album, but has anyone else noticed the lyrics to these awful new songs sound somewhat apologetic? Particularly the song “Don’t Look Down on Me,” and maybe “Louder Than Ever” and “Mine is Yours.” At least, I’d like these songs to be about how they needed this “bold new sound” in order to support themselves monetarily, but like I said maybe I’m seeing something that isn’t there. I guess I should also note that I haven’t listened to the entirety of this pile, and I don’t intend to.
I just can’t stop hoping the message is, “To the real fans, sorry for this pile of garbage but we will make good music again eventually.”