Cold War Kids’ new EP…
November 16, 2009There is a definite argument for bands only releasing EPs these days – tying yourself down to recording an album of limited ideas/ingenuity/inspiration will not cut it in an era where you live or die by the strength of each and every ‘track’ you produce.
And so CWK’s return with a 4-track EP (entitled ‘Behave Yourself’ – available 19/01/10) is – excusing my strong language – an absolute fucking relief. The band started out with their ‘Up In Rags’ & ‘Mulberry Street’ EPs getting a huge, web-spread buzz based on pure word-of-mouth, and subsequently had the majority of this material masqueraded into their debut ‘Robbers & Cowards’ album. Which was pretty brilliant.
They then seemed to rush-release the follow-up ‘Loyalty To Loyalty’ in a confusingly uninspired and badly promoted fashion, which seemed to have lost a lot of the band’s credibility and, worse, imagination. The album wasn’t exactly bad, but it was pretty heavy with B-Side material, and quickly got found out as such.
Which was all quite a pity. But on hearing ‘Audience Of One’ earlier today i’m convinced that reverting to EP format has re-surged their creativity. Even this late into the year, it’s one of the best things i’ve heard in a while – and the rest of the EP sounds promising too:
- ‘Audience Of One’
- ‘Santa Ana Winds’
- ‘Coffee Spoon’
- ‘Sermons Vs. The Gospel’
If the last track sounds familiar it’s because it’s an ‘official’ version of the hidden track following ‘Rubidoux’ on ‘Robbers & Cowards’ (and also featured on one of the former EPs, can’t remember which…). Not sure if there’s a new album on the way, but i’ll settle for a few more EPs like this.
