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Loyal Fans Will Find New Sound Compelling

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By CURTIS ROSS

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 25, 2008

Updated:

Cold War Kids go for a tougher, leaner and much harsher approach on their second full-length release, "Loyalty to Loyalty." The melodies and hooks that helped lighten up 2006's "Robbers and Cowards" are for the most part absent.

But that stripped-down sound is all the more appropriate for singer Nathan Willett's tales of desperation, quiet and otherwise.

Willett's stories take place in that danger zone where the mire and the edge sit uncomfortably close together. A security guard rescues a potential suicide victim while matter-of-factly telling what happens to the ones who leap in "Golden Gate Jumpers." An old man wonders whether to go gently or violently into that good night, or if he even has a choice, in "Dreams Old Men Dream" (I realize I'm just a hack actor finished playing my role).

Willett doesn't have Jeff Buckley's lost angel voice, but he has some of the same tragic emotion, a tone that skates the thin line separating ecstasy from pain.

If any of this is intended as political or social commentary, it's not overt. But it's hard not to see recent headlines reflected in lines such as this: How's it gonna feel when summer ends? Out of money, out of friends.

Jonathan Russell illustrates Willett's stories with guitar work that's as much percussion as harmony, utilizing popping reverb and muted picking for a dry-as-bones sound. Drummer Matt Aveiro and bassist Matt Maust never let down even when the pace approaches funereal.

There's precious little sweetness or light on "Loyalty to Loyalty," but it's one of the year's most compelling albums this side of Ra Ra Riot's "The Rhumb Line."

Download this: "Something Is Not Right With Me"

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