Cold War Kids – Dear Miss Lonelyhearts: Album Review

COLD WAR KIDS
Dear Miss Lonelyhearts
Downtown
2.5/5

Cold War Kids release album number four at an interesting point in the lifecycle of the band. Dear Miss Lonelyhearts is a transition record; the band can’t quite decide what it is and the album suffers as a result.

Guitarist Jonnie Russell has been replaced by former Modest Mouse player Dann Gallucci, who also produced the album, bringing with him new ideas and a penchant for electronic manipulation. To quote vocalist Nathan Willet, the rest of the band were happy to run with these ideas to escape further from the “blues-based spastic minimalism” of the first two albums. Yet the band isn’t yet ready to rip up the previously successful CWK template entirely. The honky-tonk heavy single and first track ‘Miracle Mile’ shows as much and sounds great.

In conversation with THE BRAG Willet admitted that he had, for the first time, taken vocal lessons in preparation for Dear Miss Lonelyhearts and his curious voice is certainly one of the best things about it, proving most effective when it is left to shine. So it is, backed by a gospel choir, on slow blues number ‘Tuxedos’ which, in Willet’s own opinion features some of his best vocal work to date. If only CWK stuck to what they know, because the synth percussion on the otherwise enjoyable ‘Lost That Easy’ is jarring. On other tracks to heavily feature space-age sound effects, they sound like they’re (unsuccessfully) shooting for The Killers’ stadia audience (‘Loner Phase’) or, worse still, just plain lost, as with the cosmic jazz of ‘Fear And Trembling’.

The highlights are strong but a lack of cohesiveness means that Dear Miss Lonelyhearts mainly misfires. If it ain’t broke…

Article published in The Brag, 8th April 2013
Photo by Lee Gwyn