You know that feeling, when you are invited in a place you did not expect to go to, when you know that only a bunch of people will be there with you, you feel privileged, and it’s a good feeling. On Tuesday night, I won an invitation to a special and private concert of Cold War Kids, organized by radio 98.7fm in their penthouse located on the rooftop of the Hollywood Tower Hotel. That seemed fancy on paper, and it was fancy in reality too.
98.7 fm organizes these intimate concerts in special places, and if you are one of the lucky winners, you are there for something special, since it is usually an acoustic set. I had the chance to attend two of these 98.7fm Rockaholics! concerts, as I also got to see Saint Motel in their Burbank location, and surprisingly, A/J Jackson of Saint Motel was there on Tuesday night, sitting front row!
They announced a little bit later on that My Chemical Romance will be performing at the same Hollywood location this Friday, and even though it is still possible to win tickets, I seriously doubt I could be lucky a third time!
Before the concert, we were invited to hang out on a nice outdoor patio where people enjoyed the free drinks and food while admiring a scenic view of a Hollywood night, quite unusually warm for the season.
Cold War Kids are about to release their new album on January 25th and seem to be everywhere lately. The four of them arrived shortly after we were invited to walk to another patio for the concert. They performed 5 acoustic songs, 4 from their upcoming release, ‘Louder than ever’, ‘Skip the charades’, ‘Mine is yours’, ‘Upside down’ and an old one, ‘Hospital beds’, from their 2006 album ‘Robbers & Cowards’.
As they said a little bit later on, they like loud electric musical instruments, and it was the first time they had Joni Mitchell-ized their songs, but they were feeling good about it.
The songs were actually sounding a little different, quite stripped down, but we could hear more of the melody and the acoustic sound was giving a magic vibe to the place. Nathan Willett’s voice was strong, clear, in the falsetto range, and aggressively surfing the three guitars and Matt Aveiro’s soft and discrete drumming.
I was only really familiar with one of their new song ‘Louder than ever’, with its even more obvious on Tuesday foot-tapping-catchy chorus, but the second one they played ‘Skip the charades’ ended up being one of my favorites with its engaging vocal harmonies and rhythmic guitars.
I must admit it, as I was looking around me and was only seeing vivid fans, I felt a little bit like a cheater, having the opportunity to see them up close and personal, without being that familiar with their material and past albums.
After their short set, two guys from 98.7 fm, asked them a few questions, first regarding the inspiration behind their new album. Nathan Willett did most of the talking, helped at times by Matt Maust, explaining that although the process was hard to narrow, the feeling to be older and to deal with life related commitments was the father of the record. Age has made them trade spontaneity for thoughtfulness, and maturity (and also a new label) transformed the live band into one that has been deliberately spending several months in the studio.
They did not really admitted they were on the Coachella line-up (Was the new poster already up on Coachella website at that time? I am not sure), but they repeated several times, they were having a ‘show in the desert’ scheduled in a near future, after a long tour.
‘We are just talking’ Willett said when addressing the Coachella rumor, ‘If Kanye is there, we will be there!’, he added.
Kanye West? His last album happened to be also the music they all listen the most lately… But why does everything have to go back to Kanye West?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o_3lup1pg8&w=500&h=390]
