Cold War Kids & The Hold Steady - London Koko - 16/2/07
4/5
By: Chris Pratt
As I squeeze hurriedly through the swollen ranks of the Club NME faithful, ten minutes late for what promises to be the best gig of 2007 so far, I note with a disappointed frown that most of the punters here don't know and/or care that ex-Lifter Puller legends The Hold Steady are onstage. Whilst lead singer Craig Finn spills his dramatic, poetic, romantic stories of modern American life, dolled-up indie kids carry on their half-drunken conversations as if this is any old Friday night at the indie super-club. As I find a vantage point far removed from the indifferent posers, the band are already halfway through 'Party Pit,' a tumbling, technicolor tale gloriously reminiscent of early Springsteen, but this is no homage - when the song reaches its anthemically downbeat 'Gonna walk around and drink some more' refrain it's clear that this song is 100% The Hold Steady.
Annoyingly I must have missed 'Stuck Between Stations' and 'Chips Ahoy!' because those two absolute peaches are lacking in the ensuing half hour - not that this Minneapolis quintet suffer from a lack of heavyweight tunes: everything last bar they play tonight hits the spot as pleasingly as one of Finn's many alcoholic refreshments. In particular, the robust harmonies and intermittent riffage of 'Southtown Girls' makes for a peerless set-closer and the nostalgic sing-a-long of 'Massive Nights' is totally...um...massive.
Predictably, there will be those who hastily write The Hold Steady off as 'retro-rockers' or suchlike, and who will simultaneously be missing the point entirely. This stuff is timeless - even if the piano player looks like he just time-warped in from a mid-70's Lower East Side dive. When Tad Kubler mounts a speaker stack to burn through one of many thrillingly don't-make-'em-like-they-used-to solos, it's neither ironic nor tongue-in-cheek but joyful, celebratory and fun. It's inspiring to see a band finally gaining the acclaim they deserve from both critics and fans for making great rock n' roll packed with intelligence and soul, free from any contrived or fashion-conscious bias. Craig Finn leaves the stage smiling ecstatically; his expression mirrored by everyone who had the good sense to give the Hold Steady forty minutes of their time.
Long Beach's Cold War Kids have been suffering something of a critical backlash since the release of their debut album, 'Robbers And Cowards,' but you wouldn't guess that from tonight's incendiary set. This band are undoubtedly much, much more than the sum of their parts, and it's often difficult to put their greatness into words. Read on, and we'll try, however....
Watching them play as a unit, observing how the relatively simple instrumental parts slot together and effortlessly complement each other, is epiphanous for first-timers, and never less than magical for those with previous CWK experience. Indeed it often appears that bassist Matt Maust and guitarist Jonathan Bo Russell are barely playing a note on their instruments, preferring to playfully bump into one another or zealously shake maracas, but miraculously the songs never falter. Of course it just so happens that the open space constructed into their music is the perfect habitat for Nathan Willet's down-home holler to reside in, its unapologetic passion filling in all the blanks. It's invigorating to hear a guy sing so unashamedly well when bands like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah have unwittingly made atonal yelping the vocal style du jour.
The 'Kids also happen to be one of the most addictively rhythmic of the current indie-rock crop: their percussive flourishes - although ubiquitous in the post-Rapture musical climate - feel like part of the songs rather than tacked on, and hark back to when the nascent 'Kids apparently used to bang out beats on walls and water-pipes during early practices. Tonight, 'We Used To Vacation' and 'Hospital Beds,' are superb: perfectly formed vignettes that are ambitious, not in boundary-pushing scope, but in their uniquely low-key, soulful approach. 'Hang Me Up To Dry' is sparsest of all, comprising little more than the nagging bass-line, a rattling rhythmic pulse and Willet's last-gasp vocals, but tellingly it's the most well-received of the lot. They don't yet have the solid foundation of a decent-sized back catalogue to dip into like The Hold Steady do, and a couple of their more introspective songs fall short, but those petty qualms detract little from the many, many positives they display tonight.
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