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The Cold War Kids Interview
Cold War Kids: love 'em or
hate them, they’ve been the next big thing in indie
music for some time now - thanks to their jazz bop and
punk founded fusion brand of music. From roots planted
in college campuses to riding the fan waves on tours
with better known gems like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah,
the Fullerton troop has quickly become the ones to watch
(in seemingly a small amount of time). With three EP’s
in just the span of a year and a major label
collaboration of them all, the band now sits on the cusp
of taking the helm on their own future. The press and
fans have done their jobs; time to shit or get off the
pot.
We sit down with bassist
Matt Maust and lead vocalist, piano and guitar player
Nathan Willet to discuss life in the fast lane driven by
ravenous indie fans and the unforgiving press while on
the road.
Pensatos: I’ve been listening to a few of your shows
I got via bootlegs. Hope you don’t sue.
Nathan Willet: It’s pretty cool to be able to get
a hold of different shows that people have recorded.
Matt Maust: I don’t know. Is that weird that
everyone has a hold of something we don’t know if it’s
decent or not?
Pensatos: Well, speaking of live shows: your stage
presence is active and Cold War Kids actually feel
into it.
Matt: It’s just that – being really into it. A
lot of energy goes into the music when we make it and
write it so it just feels right when it comes out on
stage.
Nathan: Yeah I feel like we all grew up going to
shows – punk shows – and played in bands like that. As a
visual asthetic, it was something that was so much more
exciting to watch. There’s a lot of good bands out there
that when you see live the should just like they do on
the record and it’s just not fun to watch. So
essentially you are charging someone twenty bucks to
listen to your record. It just feels like that’s what
you should do when playing live is be more energetic.
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"I kinda have this boxed in phobia
[of lollapalooza] with hot, sweaty, sun screened thousands of people. I have these anxiety visions." |
Pensatos: You all seem to know each other both as a
physical sense on stage and also musically. How did it
all start out to get from basements to touring?
Nathan: Johnnie and I started playing together
and Matt, our bass player, joined in. Then Matt Aveiro
was a friend of mine who I played with a few years
before in a band and he called me out of the blue – so
it just kinda worked out well. It helps that we all have
similar tastes and we seem to gel well together with the
kind of music we wanted to play. I think forming a
band, half the thing to conquer is trying to get
everyone on the same page. But if you really have a
similar taste and you feel that in the right place, I
think that it shows you are right for each other.
Matt: Your typical group of friends coming
together kinda story.
Pensatos: You mentioned punk as an influence
earlier. I read a brief article about you guys once
that labeled you as the reincarnation of U2.
Matt: That’s great to hear but we certainly take
our music from all over the place. We like a whole lot
of things from a lot of different music. We listen to
lots of hip hop to the punk era, a lot of Tom Waits and
some of the old blues artists. I think it’s a hodgepodge
of a lot of things. I don’t think we have a ‘This is the
sound’ where as instead we have a blues and jazz feel at
times, but not one particular thing.
Pensatos: With all those influences, how do you
tackle writing?
Nathan: We all write together. We will
usually play in a room for awhile and come up with
different parts of things and put it in the song
together. It comes from all over.
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"We want to do everything together because there is no limit to the situations and concepts worth writing about and thinking about." |
Pensatos: Do you ever think people look into it too
much; the lyrics? Is it the music first and the lyrics
second?
Nathan: It’s definitely music first and
the writing to how that music feels. I think its okay to
write first and then the music after but finding the
words for a song feels much more genuine. It also
demands that the person who did the writing of the
lyrics structure the song tightly to how those lyrics
feel to the song itself and that’s not what we want to
do. We want to do everything together because there is
no limit to the situations and concepts worth writing
about and thinking about.
Pensatos: This past year has been your fist big year
on the road. Before that you were locally only to the
West Coast. How has this thrust not only as a
nationwide tour been but also the recent ‘darling’ tag
that’s been thrown on you by the indie spotlight?
Matt: The West Coast just feels more
natural when we are touring. We play with small bands
and we tend to fuck around a bit more. We went out east
it was crazy. Nothing really prepares you for this, you
know? Hopefully it slows down toward the end of the year
so we can get back into the studio. The first year and a
half of our band was just sitting around in our
apartments, writing songs, and playing local shows. So
having less writing time hurts the most. So, yeah, we
defiantly have the itch now.
Nathan: Yeah, right now getting it’s getting our
individual quite time that seems to be most important.
We don’t party all night and wake up to be a wreck all
day. We do this to do it well. We consider ourselves
smart people so we tend to like to hang out and talk to
friends and fans more often socially. That’s just the
kinda things we like to do. We’re not old men.
Matt: We’re old men.
Nathan: Yeah, we’re a lot like old men. We just
wanna go to bed by midnight. But it never happens.
Pensatos: But are you ready for the larger crowds
for venues like Lollapalooza. I mean, you just played a
show that had a couple hundred people. Fast forward to
a music festival where there will be thousands of
people.
Matt: If they show up. [laughs] We’ll see how
many show up to our show. Honestly I haven’t even
thought about it yet.
Nathan: Yeah, I mean – we’ll see. I’ve honestly
never been to a festival before. I’ve only played in
one. I kinda have this boxed in phobia with hot,
sweaty, sun screened thousands of people. I have these
anxiety visions. It will be exciting for the experience
level I’m sure. I have this youthful perception of
festivals like Lollapalooza that include Pearl Jam but
we are all kinda laughing about it now. “We’re playing
Lollapalooza today, what the hell.” |
