Sin Songs

Cold War Kids have been tagged a 'Christian rock band', yet their rollicking songs of hard men and hard living are anything but pious. Lead singer Nathan Willett tells Jim Carroll how his lyrics were inspired partly by night courses in writing - and partly by religion

NATHAN Willett knows it will be a long time before he has to go back to his day job as a teacher. There are days, sure, when he doesn't know if this is a good or a bad thing.

Willett's current occupation finds him enduring lengthy soundchecks, answering weird questions posed by strangers on the phone, waking up in a new city every morning and prowling a different stage every night.

He and his fellow Cold War Kids are finishing off a European support tour with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. In March, the Californian band will take their ragged, glorious songs about desperados and sinners from coast to coast in the US. In April, they'll return to Europe. It's a transatlantic yo-yo which they will get to know very well this year.

Cold War Kids are in demand chiefly because of their debut album, Robbers & Cowards. It's populated by a bunch of characters you'd recognise on sight and would probably cross the street to avoid. There's the unsteady, unreliable boozer on We Used to Vacation who causes hell for his family and everyone else around him; the cheap suit in Passing the Hat who robs the church collection plate; and the dude in Rubidoux who runs for the hills with a bottle of whiskey in his paw.

But it's Willett's drawl and the rambunctious, fiery spirit at the heart of the album that really mark Robbers & Cowards out from the pack. In a time when so many American songwriters are showing off their observational prowess, these kids deserve their place at the front of the queue.

Willett's ability to turn glimpses of everyday sinners into captivating songs owes a lot to a couple of short-story night-courses he did. "The songs musically and lyrically tell stories, and I like telling stories. They are stories where some of the characters are fictional and some are built from people we know. There are so many people and characters in the songs, and they're really funny and serious at the same time.

"They're really stories in song form about experiences and trials. If there's any message, it's probably a very straightforward one, such as, don't envy people who have more money than you, or be happy with what you got yourself."

He cites journalists and novelists as much as songwriters for influencing his approach to songwriting. "I think a lot about objectivity, and that's something all good journalists seem to have. They have this great ability to peek into someone's life, but not talk about them emotionally, so you're not told how to feel about them."

Still, when it comes to talking about what's going on in his songs beyond the broad brushstrokes of the characters, Willett has learned to be a little cagey. It's understandable in the wake of the fuss made in some US reviews and interviews about the band's background. Three of the four members attended Biola University, a private Christian school outside Los Angeles. While they've never sought to hide this information from anyone, they soon found themselves pigeonholed as a Christian rock band and facing a strange backlash from people who previously championed them.

The singer attributes some of the barbs to "lazy journalism, where if you don't like a band, you pick up one thing about them and write about that". But he also sees a bit of an agenda developing in how some reviewers have taken the songs out of context.

"I think it's really tabloid to think of someone's song as though it is expressing his explicit belief in something. A lot of people shy away from a thoughtful reflection on the music and instead take some kind of sharp angle and make fun of what the song might be saying."

To Willett, his songs simply reflect the way people like Tom Waits or Johnny Cash used religion and religious language to talk about America. "It's a powerful language and it's everywhere in the country. People sometimes overlook the fact that America is a strongly religious country. I've found when you use religious language that it really connects with people."

Despite the witch-hunt over lyrics, Willett says the coverage hasn't done them any harm. "Much as I'd prefer if people came straight out and asked you about your beliefs, I don't really mind what has happened too much. After all, you want people to know about what you're doing. The negative attention is attention at the same time and, hopefully, people will dig a little deeper and realise that article was way off."

After all, as he points out, it is much easier to do that now. "The way modern media works is a great thing for us as artists. People can have instant access to you, find out about your band, and listen to your songs so easily. You don't have to have a record in a store any more or have a distribution deal; you just have to be resourceful. Of course, there is less mystery involved, but I think the speed of access makes up for that."

Cold War Kids are also finding out fast about what it takes to keep a band on the road. "We've learned so much in such a small span of time," Willett says. "Little things, big things and totally unheard of things. We certainly didn't set out to make things happen in this way, but it did happen anyway."

Robbers & Cowards is out now on V2. Cold War Kids play Whelan's, Dublin on April 24th and Empire Music Hall, Belfast on April 25th