Cold War Kids and the Anti-Buzz Boomerang

Occasionally, a band will get entirely too much press, both physical and web-based, and they will actually turn out to be good. This is an unfortunately rare occurrence. For every Cold War Kids, there are five Clap Your Hands Say Yeahs and Hot Chips out there that burn me. These bands surely aren't terrible, but some of it I listen to and I'm like "this is what all this fuss is about?" Cold War Kids have been literally everywhere in the last year, from Rolling Stone (4 of 5), to Conan O'Brian, to Spin Magazine, to just about every blog on the web. Usually when this happens to an actually decent band that means I won't get into them until the fervor dies down due to my skepticism and general distrust of reviews in Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, and Spin (to name a few).

That all being said, this is a sharp band. Aside from the single everyone has heard ("Hang Me Up to Dry"), Robbers & Cowards is a surprisingly well balanced album awash in dancy emotion, soaked in signature guitar tones, and sabotaged in parts by random piano fumblings or open-guitar-strums. It's definitely so fresh and so clean, despite being 8 months old and being whored up and down Main St in the interim. I like to believe there's still good taste in the big new band buzz. This tastes like love.

Listen:
We Used to Vacation
Hospital Beds
[from Robbers & Cowards|buy]