US fourpiece the Cold War Kids take a while to get into, which may be why they always like to issue EPs rather than singles; this is their fifth EP to date.
We Used To Vacation gets off to a rocky start with a rather atypical (and I can't help but think commercially abrasive) titular number taken from their debut album, Robbers & Cowards. At first their sound is uncomfortable but not terribly interesting in a post-Punk style (it sounds like The Strokes with all their Velvet Underground influences sucked out), and the strangely mannered, whiney delivery of lead singer Nathan Willetts on the opening track made me want to dislike them. Maybe you just have to listen to him for a while to adjust. I daresay the terrible rhymes in the first verse didn't help either. But it rewards several listens, and turns into a real grower as you focus beyond the lyrics to the dissonant piano plonking away among skittish drums and occasional blasts of raw guitar playing.
As the EP progresses it starts to sound more like a quartet of torch songs shot through with little snippets of images. Expensive Taste with is chiming guitar and unhurried drums, gets more and more interesting as it progresses, Willetts' voice becoming strident in its urgency - the phrasing has a flavour of Jack White about it. Harmony In Silver continues in the same vein, with an almost tribal quality to the drumming. The whole is rounded off with Quiet Please, bare guitar and voice mirroring each other with long, stretched notes, and more of that simple, heavy but extremely effective drum, which slowly builds and builds. It would be interesting to see where they could go if they really started taking things to the extreme. They need to forget about The Strokes and go back to The Velvets and take some risks.
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