Since their 2014 album success Hold My Home Cold War Kids have kept relatively quiet, recently becoming signed under Capitol Records and generically speaking ‘hitting the big time’. This spring, they have returned with a full length album dedicated to LA titled accordingly: L.A Divine. The band have said that the album is an ode to Los Angeles, the O.C and Long Beach, a topic thoroughly covered by breezey-indie rock bands in America.

In addition to this, the foursome are back with a minor change to their previous lineup, with new guitarist David Quon and three songs featuring British-born musician Bishop Briggs. This new set up have come together to produce a record that is feel-good indie rock, with piano lines galore and snappy sing-along choruses – a recipe that will undoubtedly garner them a similar kind of popularity following Hold My Home.

The lead single off the album, ‘Love Is Mystical’ is an upbeat single that is characterised by its stomping pianos. Going by its name alone, the track delivers the sun-soaked romance that you would expect from a title track from Cold War Kids that is bathed in L.A nostalgia with the word “love” in the title. Despite the crowd-riling-ballad nature of the song, its monumental piano riff which sits predominantly at the crux of its catchiness, sounds a little too similar to that of Fat Boy Slim’s ‘Praise You’.

Willets is a musician who obviously has great ability with his vocals but his melodic choices are questionable, which is demonstrated in ‘Invincible’ and ‘Ordinary Idols’. However, they don’t follow the traditional pop vibe. It sounds as though hat was the intended end game, but the melodies don’t sit in the same stride, they aren’t memorable or hooky, they meander in a more singer-songwriter sense. In essence, it appears as a strange mish mash of mainstream pop sitting uncomfortably next to a bandy set up that doesn’t quite sit well.

Tracks such as ‘No Reason To Run’ and ‘So Tied Up’ are anthemic, swelling, crowd moving songs with big choruses and a lot of intent, which is often most successful with simplistic resonating chords, however, in this case the keys fall a bit flat. The lack of complexity musically in the tracks, which appears as a deliberate choice, comes across as a lack of attention to detail, as it is repeated across the album.

It is not all doom and gloom on this album however. In a few, outstanding tracks, the band have captured the L.A dreamland concept well, in a chaotic and heated distortion that has consistent elements of summer optimism. ‘LA River’ is a noise-pop interlude that plays with new, alternative and far more indie sounds than the rest of the album and actually serves to work as one of the strongest examples of experimentation and songwriting. This is also seen on ‘Can We Hang On?’ – an upbeat, fast-paced track that could easily see itself being a strong summer anthem. However, it must be noted that these tracks take the form of a much more traditional band-based experimentation which seems to be a technique that the band are stronger in. Overall, perhaps it would be wiser if Cold War Kids stuck to their roots for future albums and avoided the mainstream pop path.
Sian Blewitt

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