Band of the Week: Cold War Kids

Hearing Whittier’s Cold War Kids perform live can be pretty goddamn surprising, if you’re not expecting it. They simply sound so different from all the rock and pop that’s playing out right now that it’s almost a shock to the system to catch them break into heavily blues/soul influenced music on-stage. It’s a head-scratching moment... at first.

Then you’ll hear a song like Hang Me Out to Dry or Hospital Beds, which just destroy any preconceived notions you’ve had of what you were going to hear that night and make you suddenly realize, "Wow… This is really good."

Cold War Kids have been touring constantly this summer, first with the likes of Minneapolis’ Tapes n Tapes and now Austin’s Sound Team, in support of the two EPs they concurrently released a few months back.

Our reviewer Gabriel Burger wrote in his dual review of Up in Rags and With Our Wallets Full that the group “serve up a damn tasty stew of pop/rock, flavored with seasonings ranging from the likes of Television, The Velvet Underground, classic French pop to full-blown gospel and dust-bowl folk. Very intelligent without pretension, it retains an emotional core that makes it much more approachable than a lot of other bands in their esoteric wake.”

LA show-goers who missed them at The Echo a few weeks ago will have to wait awhile to see them play again, but they’re due to play just about everyone else’s town over the next few months and are part of the surprisingly solid line-up at this year’s Lollapalooza in Chicago.