Cold War Kids have announced their 10th studio album, Cold War Kids, that will arrive on November 3 via AWAL. To celebrate, the band has also shared the second single off the album, the pop/rock summer anthem “Run Away With Me,” which was also World Premiered on iHeart Radio today.
With its funky groove and huge chorus, “Run Away With Me” sets the tone for the LP as a whole – 12 high-minded, stylistically diverse songs referencing everything from Curtis Mayfield to the Pretenders and Elton John to Happy Mondays and Gang Of Four. Frontman Nathan Willet notes, “We started “Run Away With Me ” with Carlos de la Garza (Paramore, Linda Linda’s ) as this Sly Stone type of funky soul song that evolved into a more soulful pop tune about two desperate, down-and-out lovers.”
Today’s single follows Cold War Kids’ previously released “Double Life” which saw support from, among others, Spin, Under The Radar, Yahoo! Music, and American Songwriter who called it “an energetic, shoulder-shaking new single.” The band played that song and other fan favorites on their recent tour as the direct support for Tears For Fears. The run included a stop at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in June and culminated with a performance at The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles earlier this month.
Over the course of nine studio albums and numerous EPs, Cold War Kids are an integral part of the modern musical landscape thanks to deeply personal songcraft and a commitment to forward motion. In 2023, nearly 2 decades after their inception and with 1 billion streams across their catalog, the California band continues to prove why they’re an essential piece of the alt-rock ecosystem with the announcement of their 10th studio album.
If Nathan Willett followed his usual impulses, Cold War Kids’ 10th album might just have been a five-song EP, or an album with entirely different songs than the 12 ultimately chosen here. Instead, Willett took a rare pandemic-era breather to really contemplate what a Cold War Kids album could, and should, sound like in 2023, and how to infuse the material with meaningful discourse about his life specifically and the state of the world more broadly. Clearly, it was worth the wait: the aptly self-titled result is perhaps the strongest and most well-rounded full-length in the long-running California band’s ample catalog, and the purest possible distillation of Cold War Kids’ nearly 20-year career.
“If I’ve got five songs done that I’ve worked on in a certain way, I tend to want to put them out as an EP and go do some shows around it,” Willett says of his mindset during the early stages of Cold War Kids. “Continually as my brain would go to that place, I’d go, no, just wait, and really put together a full-length record. I needed to approach things very differently and work with some new people in a way that was a little uncomfortable. This album is where I’ve most felt like I was the executive producer of everything.”
“The band started out with four guys who have very specific tastes and styles, and now it’s mostly me making the records in a way I love and have always envisioned,” Willett says. “The sound of Cold War Kids has always been there, and I wanted this record to be the ideal, best version of all those things we’ve always been.”
Just as the music on Cold War Kids draws equally from the band’s blues-and-soul-driven sonic past as well as fresh forays into dance beats and ‘80s pop/rock, the album’s themes of creative life conflicting with domestic realities reflect Willett’s increasingly introspective state of mind. Committed to pushing himself just as hard to create the album’s sound, Willett turned to a handful of new producers and collaborators, including Militarie Gun’s Max Epstein, Casey Lagos (Kesha, Wrabel), Ethan Gruska (Phoebe Bridgers, Weezer), Jenn Decliveo (Miley Cyrus, Hozier), and Malay (Frank Ocean, Lorde).
Ultimately, Cold War Kids is the culmination of Willett and Maust’s two-decade creative partnership, and it embodies the realization that said partnership is still truly worth celebrating. “For so many years, we were white-knuckling it and feeling like we were imposters,” Willett admits. “I realized, I can’t think that way. If I’m not sure I can listen back to something and know that it’s great, then I shouldn’t be putting it out.”
“This group of friends met and were drawn to each other at a Christian college, and we started the band in a strange environment where we realized, what are we all doing here?,” Willet says. “We came from a place of growing up, listening to music, and going to shows, and there’s a type of sweetness where we were sheltered from the music industry or wanting to be successful at any cost. Maust and I still have that connection, and it’s still an important part of what Cold War Kids are today.”
Cold War Kids is Nathan Willett (vocals, piano, guitar), Matt Maust (bass guitar), David Quon (guitar, backing vocals), Matthew Schwartz (keyboards, backing vocals, guitar, percussion), and Joe Plummer (drums, percussion).
