Last week’s Cold War Kids gig at The Academy was predictably filled with the neon wayfarers brigade. Whatever, they’re unavoidable, I have faith that someday soon they’ll realise that they’re not MGMT. That aside, once the music started all eyes were firmly fixed on the stage and what followed was an obscure musical extravaganza that Cold War Kids have perfected to a tee. Admittedly, I haven’t listened to their new album, Loyalty to Loyalty, more than a handful of times so wasn’t over-familiar with some of the newer songs, but the band have an energy, or a ‘pull’ of some description, that makes it impossible to look away. Their playfulness and willingness to stretch traditional conventions of what a typical four piece should be is mesmerising. Rather than your standard set with a couple of guitar changes and maybe a foray onto the piano by the lead vocalist, they chop and change instruments with the energy of a 5 year old on blue Smarties, introducing a plethora of inanimate objects that suddenly transform into melodic instruments. And it all suddenly seems so simple – remember when you used to bang pots and pans together as a child and drop marbles into the sink just because you liked the sound of it? Ok maybe that last one was just me, but you know what I mean. At one point, Jonnie Russel bangs a drumstick against an empty wine bottle whilst a drum cymbal is haphazardly thrown on the floor and tossed like a frisbee as the crowd delight in the richness it adds to the beautifully off-key songs.
I’m not going to go through the set-list song by song because to be honest there’s no point, one song led excitedly into the next. Highlights for me were definitely the sublime Hospital Beds, latest single Something is Not Right with Me and encore St John but there was no particular ‘best song’.
Their ethos shows that music is there to have fun with and take delight in. Delight in discovering new sounds and new formations, not just sticking your standard ‘verse verse chorus verse bridge chorus’.
Throughout the whole gig, a bouncer resembling a bulldog stood arms folded at the front of the stage looking physically in pain. To me, he summed up the Cold War Kids – you either get it or you don’t.
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