Cold War Kids are chilling pre-show in the dressing room at Dublin’s Ambassador theatre. They are plainly exhausted, and respond to all queries in dreamy, languorous tones. Occasionally, they will trail off mid-sentence and ask to be reminded of my initial question. The Kids have long been voracious travellers, but will later confess that the last month has left them “totally wiped out”.
The best way to wake a group from such a daze is, of course, to put your foot in it – which I manage to do quite early in the interview. I had detected a certain meaty quality to the group’s brand of indie-rock, and asked if they saw themselves as a left-leaning Classic Rock band. Their reaction is one of mild, joking outrage – though they do admit to understanding my perspective.
“When you say 'Classic Rock', it sounds kinda throwback-y to us,” explains drummer Matt Aveiro. “We think of it as a Jet-ish kind of band. But, there are definitely influences from past times in our music – even The Velvet Underground is, in a sense, classic rock ‘n’ roll.”
The argument, says singer Nathan Willett, will soon be rendered academic as Cold War Kids head off in a new direction.
“I’m not sure if it’s the road that's caused the change, so much as playing the songs for over a year,” he muses, while strumming absent-mindedly on an acoustic guitar. “That’s definitely gonna make us wanna break out of some things. There’ll be new instruments, though I can’t say what, specifically. But we’ll wanna break out of the rock-and-guitar mode.”
The group have also been pigeonholed as a Christian band in some quarters, though they're reluctant to embrace the label. They met at an evangelical Christian college, but when pressed on the issue, Willett suggests that the fleeting religious references in their music are more for use of imagery and metaphor – though he falls short of saying that they possess no personal significance whatsoever.
“In the US, that religious language is a big part of the country, more so than in Europe. It’s still very effective to use those words, in the same way that Johnny Cash, Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan used them, because it stirs up a lot in people.”
The group are difficult to tie down on this issue, as they are on many others. The only subject that arouses any consensus from them is the importance of the internet to their career. As they explain, it was not just the public’s ability to download tracks that aided them, but the rave reviews they received on blogs.
“People would listen to our songs on the net, then go out and see the show, and then they would write about that,” explains guitarist Jonnie Russell. “It was a good way for us to get a lot of exposure.”
Let’s hope this Cold War has a few years to run yet.