Send "Cold War Kids " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Pastemagazine |
 Music blogs are like bad boyfriends. They take a heretofore unknown band, make them feel special with much frothing keyboard clickity-clack, turn them into rock stars, then suddenly lose their number when the next well-coiffed strumpet in skinny jeans strolls by. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Tapes ’n Tapes are probably still, right now, sitting in their living rooms decked out in mascara-smeared prom dresses waiting for Pitchfork to pick them up, wondering why their respective follow-up albums were greeted with such a resounding chorus of crickets. ...full text |
| Yahoo |
| Few new bands endured a more turbulent 2007 than Cold War Kids. No sooner had press and public alike whipped themselves into a fervour over their extraordinary single "Hang Me Up To Dry", than the backlash began and they were accused of pretension, miserablism, a patchy album and - most damning of all, in the eyes of hipsters - Christianity. So there's much to admire in the defiant way that "Loyalty To Loyalty" is so tonally, musically and thematically similar to their debut, only more so. They've stuck to their guns, but improved their aim. Everything that divided listeners first time round is intensified: the bleak subject matter, the bluesy pacing and, most of all, Nathan Willett's anguished howl. Willett is one of those rare frontmen able to sing from different points of view with utter conviction, inhabiting his role: a method singer. It's his manic intensity that holds the deranged, helter skelter tale of nervous collapse that is "Something Is Not Right With Me" together, while his audible, aching empathy saves the browbeaten woman of "Every Man I Fall For" from total self-pity. ...full text |
| Urb |
| So much of the Cold War Kids’ charm on their first batch of commercially consumed songs was the simplicity of lead-singer Nathan Willet’s ability to tell stories. Because of their microscopic focus, his narratives yielded epic results full of literary grandeur, pulsing virulence and springing puissance. Added to melodiously pounded pianos and popping bass lines, songs like “Hospital Beds” and “We Used to Vacation” bred life with a supernatural ability. Loyalty to Loyalty, the band’s sophomore release, isn’t as immediately impacting as that first round of songs, but CWK didn’t lose their charm (or literary obsessions), either. Song titles like “Every Valley Is Not a Lake” and “Something Is Not Right With Me” might sound like short stories, but the former is a bluesy jaunt through bar-hopping piano and the latter an inspiring burst of energy. “Golden Gate Jumpers” panders slightly, but the devil is in the details and the song’s protagonist talks another potential SF suicide off the bridge with a genuine sweetness. Cold War Kids garnered plenty of haters on the first go around (we see you, Pitchfork), but they’ve unflinchingly held true to their guns, making more tales for sloppy dive bars and their inhabitants, hunched over typewriters and mistuned pianos simultaneously. ...full text |
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