Thursday 30/11/06 Cold War Kids @ The Borderline, London

Cold War Kids have arrived aboard a gushing wave of critical acclaim from the music press, broadsheets and all the way to mainstream radio since they first started treading the boards in the UK this year. So much so, the tag ‘a tip for 2007’ is now almost synonymous with them. Of course, only on their first EP release (on these shores at least), this has a led to an inevitable backlash from some quarters, claiming the Long Beach foursome are not as good as the plaudits may suggest and labeling them as a watered down Ben Folds Five etc. So Gigwise arrived at a packed-out Borderline with an open mind, ready to see whether they can live up to the bubble of hype that brought them here. Thankfully they far from disappoint.

A different entity to their records, the Cold War Kids live experience is much more organic. From the opening clatter of ‘Rudidoux’ they are filled with an urgency, almost desperate to prove their point, front man Nathan Willet twitches and spits out his words with a distinct passion, while musically it’s direct and powerful. Okay, there are umpteen parallels to their melodic, ostensibly American sound displayed tonight, but what they lack in originality is more than made up for in their drive.

The now familiar piano chimes of ‘We Used To Vacation’ is met with a typically fervent reception, the potent lyrics like “Still things could be much worse, natural disasters on the evening news”, given extra weight in the live setting. While ‘Hung Me Up To Dry’ shows an even rawer side to their façade, taking the set to an even more abrasive level. Like many emotionally driven acts, they effortlessly flit between such numbers and stripped down plaintive offerings like the rarely played ’Every Valley Is Not A Lake.’ True, they may have a while to go before they can truly be called anything great, but tonight Cold War Kids display a definite promise that’s difficult not to get swept away with.