Album: ‘Mine is Yours’

Artist: Cold War Kids

Sounds Like: A Kings of Leon cover band

Soundwaves: 2.5/5

Release Date: Jan. 25, 2011

In several ways, Cold War Kids have much in common with alternative rock’s radio-friendly charmers Kings of Leon. Debut album hyped to death by the blogosphere? Check. Follow-up efforts that stumble step trying to recreate the critical success of the debut — then fail to live up to standards? Check. An album that departs from garage-rock roots toward embracing clean-cut arena anthems, thus garnering success and radio airplay? Well, that’s where the trail to fame for Cold War Kids abruptly goes cold.

What the Grammy Award-winning ‘Only By the Night’ did for Kings of Leon, Long Beach-based Cold War Kids hope to replicate with success of their own using newest release ‘Mine is Yours.’ However, from the first glossy note of the synthesizer on the title track, it appears the Cold War Kids’ following of the Kings of Leon’s format, which lead from its fast-track to alternative-rock stardom, has gone awry.

Gone are Nathan Willett’s boozy vibrato-laced voice and bluesy, jittery piano chords that made the band’s first album, ‘Robbers and Cowards,’ an endearing listen. The classic rock leanings and jazzy influences have flown the coop on ‘Mine is Yours’ as Willett’s vocals are injected with a copious dose of soul-sucking Auto-Tune. The song becomes nothing more then a staggeringly slow-tempo love song, however,save for a bridge that shakes with a nervous energy that used to be the band’s calling card.

‘Louder Than Ever’ is a redeeming track with grungy guitar riffs and Willett’s frantic vocal delivery, but it suffers from a sugar-coated chorus that belongs on a Neon Trees album. ‘Royal Blue’ is a low-key jam with a groovy bass line, and as the song breezes aimlessly by, a ray of sunlight streaks through the clouds. Could this be the Cold War Kids we remember?

After that is when the parallels to the band’s original sound come to a screeching halt. ‘Finally Begin’ sounds like a collaborative effort between OneRepublic and Train, and it mentions every hackneyed cliché about falling in love as Willett can cram in. ‘Out of the Wilderness’ is a song punch-drunk on its own forced emotions and fails to feign sincerity about its cheerfully soulful melody and clamoring drum beats of Matt Aveiro.

Somewhere during the three-year span between full lengths, Willett must have found true love, adopted a puppy or saved a ton of money on car insurance by switching to Geico because his dark personal lyricism that dominated the band’s early days has been replaced with an overbearingly sunny and hopeless romanticism. The middle of ‘Mine is Yours’ is cluttered with falsetto-heavy, radio-friendly tracks, such as ‘Skip the Charades’ and ‘Sensitive Kid,’ that ooze with swagger augmented by toe-tappingly jaunty piano chords.

‘Bulldozer’ is a jazzy number that showcases Willett’s lovelorn croon but drags on unnecessarily for over five minutes and overstays its welcome in listeners’ headphones. Both ‘Broken Open’ and ‘Cold Toes on the Cold Floor’ recall the band’s earnestly old-fashioned sound, but ‘Broken Open’ comes across as nothing more than a schmaltzy endeavor. Meanwhile, ‘Cold Toes’ struggles with a sing-song chorus, despite Willett’s rousing ‘One more!’ cry, which is one chorus too many for a track that lacks the signature barroom arrogance the band just can’t seem to recapture.

Cold War Kids may have followed Kings of Leon’s gospel of going from brooding, Southern-tinged garage rockers to wildly famous arena rockers overnight. But they sure could ‘use somebody’ to remind them that everything that glitters (glitzy production with band manager Jacquire King’s greasy fingers all over the album) is not gold.

ervanrhe@syr.edu

Published on January 31, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Erik: ervanrhe@syr.edu | @therealvandyman