Cold War Kids bassist Matt Maust could barely muster the strength to lift his feet the two long flights of stairs up into the studio on this day just two weeks ago. They’d gotten on the road early that morning, coming from Chicago, where they’d opened for Mates of State the night before. The Mates were playing a post-Lollapalooza show while the Kids were playing something more along the preview lens. In Chicago already, the California four-piece obliged us with a detour – writing us at the beginning of the week to say that they really wanted to come in for a session and which of these three days would work best. We took their off-day away from them and caught them on a Friday afternoon that was our own private first day of Lollapalooza as Texans Sound Team stopped in eight hours later to record right into the wee hours of the night. This session was a dichotomy of the band that is being written about in a special way these days. It’s gained for itself prestige as one of the most potent live acts roaming this great land – and seeing them the next morning in Chicago, before anyone in the Central time zone’s lunch could have possibly settled showed that yeah, sure thing, these are those guys. But here they were, somewhat quiet, mighty friendly and as subdued as four logs, recording four songs that still can make hair stand on end for they are stampedes of irrational fusion and dynamic squalls of vibrant amens or something along those lines. You know it when you feel it. You know it when it hits you. You know it when you hear them. These guys sing songs that always have an element of taking those waxwings too close to the sun, but making it alright because at least it inspired something good, something that made us feel more alive. – Sean Moeller

Lead singer Nathan Willett gives his detailed summaries of the session songs below. If you look closely, they will appear in quotation marks.

First song
God Make Up Your Mind (Cold War Kids) [4.45MB] [15427 downloads]


– unreleased
”’God, Make Up Your Mind’ its about a Bobby Fischer-type kid, real smart, sensitive, listening to Nina Simone—he’s way ahead of his years, kind of freakishly ahead of his years. There’s a line ‘100 years of solitude and only 12 years old,’ which is like a way of saying that he’s known so much loneliness, even in his short life he has one of those huge capacities for human experience, his own and other peoples. So here he is on vacation with his mom and his new stepdad and his sister and he’s thinking about how unjust all of this is, the selfishness of adults, forgiveness, wrestling, talking to God about it. There’s a line ‘drew a picture of a cat laying dead in the street,’ which is my favorite, it’s a reference to this J.D. Salinger story ‘Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters,’ where I think Seymour is talking about this proverb that says that the most valuable thing in the world is a dead cat because you can’t put a price on it. So this kid was born out of these Salinger kids, who are notorious for being so smart and young and wise.”

Second song
Hospital Beds (Cold War Kids) [4.80MB] [13778 downloads]


– original version appears on the With Our Wallets Full” EP
”’Hospital Beds’ is a story of a couple older men that don’t know each other, stuck in a hospital room together. They find connections. They’re maybe going to die, but that’s not totally important, what’s important is that they find something where they thought there was nothing. ‘Put out the fire, boys’ is a way of saying hose me down, all this pain and ugliness, get rid of it, it’s on us.”

Third song
Passing The Hat (Cold War Kids) [3.55MB] [13010 downloads]


– unreleased
”’Hat in Church’ has a new title – ‘Passing the Hat.’ It’s about a guy who steals from the offering plate in church. He feels he’s justified because he needs the money to get away from America and sail the Baltic Sea. He sees the way that the congregants give unknowingly and he despises that. Reminds me of Crime and Punishment, that sort of justification, rationalization of a wrong act.”

Fourth song
We Used To Vacation (Cold War Kids) [3.86MB] [17011 downloads]


– original version appears on the “Up In Rags” EP
“This is a story of an alcoholic father written in the first person. It’s not about vacation at all, the title is used to be a quick explanation of the state of a family that no longer vacations, as in they’re not doing so well. This guy is not really trying to deny his alcoholism as much as express his situation.”

Cold War Kids

Purchase Cold War Kids music at Insound