Why did Cold War Kids cross the road? To get to the middle. That’s the sort of cruel joke some unkind people (me) were making around the time 2011’s ‘Mine Is Yours’ came out. That album kinda sucked. That’s why it’s such a relief to hear the exhilarating piano-pounding of opener ‘Miracle Mile’ and realise that they’ve stopped trying to do indie rock by numbers and gone back to the sort of idiosyncratic weirdness that made us fall for them in the first place. ‘Jailbirds’ sounds like dancing in the eye of a squalling storm, while anyone who can reference Søren Kierkegaard’s proto-existentialist treatise Fear And Trembling while wailing like a ragged Brandon Flowers is alright by us.
Kevin EG Perry