If you ask around, you’ll find a fair share of people who offer Fullerton, California’s Cold War Kids much affection. If your thing is fluid melodies, for instance, or taut pop hooks, you won’t find them in their repertoire. Their music could fairly be called repetitive. If you dressed sexy enough, I certainly wouldn’t kick you out of bed for calling them derivative. Some think their decision to release a full-length record distilled from previously available EPs constitutes some sort of art vs. commerce faux pas. Others, still, question their authenticity—you know, on the weekends, after a long hard week of doubting The Hold Steady’s authenticity. But it was an article in this week’s Sun that picked at what is perhaps the bitterest scab of apparent controversies surrounding the band—the insistent Christian overtones that course through their lyrical content.
No one knows for certain when they held the meeting where it was decided that Christianity was deemed a weird thing to sing about, but Cold War Kids have taken a goodly number of lashes for it all the same. Most of this fooferaw stems from—what else?—a Pitchfork review, in which critic Marc Hogan breathlessly ranted about it as if he were breaking news of some sort of scandal:
“Unlike the idiosyncratic hymns of Sufjan Stevens or Jeff Mangum, Robbers and Cowards often relies on veiled evangelical boilerplates. Blue Staters might not recognize the rote figurative language right away, but many others will: how “put out the fire on us” from “Hospital Beds” signifies a call for baptism, or how the sudden shift on “Saint John” to “All us boys on death row/ We’re all waiting for a pardon” is a reminder that we’re each of us sentenced to die unless we accept God’s redeeming grace.”
Well, gol-ly! Those sure are some downright dangerous ideas to be singing about! Let me translate: Sufjan gets a pass for his quasi-Xtian antics because he couches it in enough twee affectation to make it digestible for the slavering, pagan Blue-Staters and their collections of golden calves, while Cold War Kids should be denigrated for using the sort of broad religious imagery that’s too easily recognized by unwashed, uncool, tres gauche Normals. Got that? Indie rock is only allowed to resonate with some people. The whole review is as inept a piece of writing as you’re likely to ever encounter, the jaw-dropping apex of which is where it assigns blame for the Kids’ success to “an emerging cabal of non-traditional tastemakers.” Wow. Talk about the Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels) calling the Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles) black!
