Cold War Kids

by

Summerfest

These days, Nathan Willett values the autonomy he and his band, Cold War Kids, have gained over a career that now stretches 20 years and spans 10 albums. That sense of freedom has shown up in tangible ways, first on the band’s “New Age Norms” trilogy of releases and now on a self-titled album that was released in October. Cold War Kids embarked on these projects after their contract with Capitol Records expired and the band in 2018 released a greatest hits collection, This Will All Blow Over In Time, and a live album, Audience.

In a sense, those two releases marked the end of a chapter in the Cold War Kids story, and Willett, in a recent phone interview, said he wanted to cast aside some of the usual considerations that come with making new music.

The format itself for “New Age Norms” was a bit of a rebellious statement. Each eight-song installment was a little long to be marketed as an EP, but a bit short of being a full album and was recorded with a different producer. The first installment arrived in November 2019, followed by New Age Norms 2 in August of 2020 and the final chapter in September 2021.  

“I think it represented a sort of, a lot of things,” Willett said of ‘New Age Norms. “I think it represented a certain type of freedom and a certain type of like totally not really caring about how it’s all going to land. For me a lot of it is breaking the constraint of the album or the single and just kind of being somewhere in between and being sort of in a way maximal, a maximalism in ways it was this huge exercise in writing and production and trying things and spreading our wings and working with different people, working in different ways, finding different sounds, asking us what can a Cold War Kids song be like? “

The three “New Age Norms” releases were well received, with some critics praising Cold War Kids for broadening their musical horizons, while delivering hook-filled songs that retained the band’s signature mix of alt-rock with shadings of R&B and blues, yet also being a bit more concise and a little less chaotic than early hits like “Hang Me Up To Dry” or “Something Is Not Right With Me.”