Kevin Bronson on January 22nd, 2010

0

Nathan Willett sounds like a man ready to plunge into the abyss, or at least a guy at a crossroads.

In a way, he and his bandmates in Cold War Kids are. Four years after the scrappy quartet from Orange County (now, Long Beach) elbowed their way into indie hearts with their sweaty blues-punk, Willett, Matt Maust, Matt Aveiro and Jonnie Russell have been taking inventory – reconnecting with their home turf after too many months on the road, working on new songs and grappling with the notion that, with two albums down and a critical third on the horizon, making music is no longer an avocation but a career.

Not a small matter, that last concept: After a six-date tour that begins tonight at the Wiltern Theatre, Cold War Kids head to Nashville for a six-week recording session with heavyweight producer Jacquire King (Tom Waits, Modest Mouse, Kings of Leon, Norah Jones, Sea Wolf, among others).

• ||| Download (via RCRDLBL.com): “Audience of One”

“This is the the longest stretch that we’ve been home for four years, and we’ve kind of been in an album-writing, creative space,” Willett says of the foursome’s recent sessions in a San Pedro practice room, where plenty of re-imagining has been going on. “In the past, a lot of our songs were written in a spontaneous and almost spastic way. We are at a place where we are ready to move beyond that … ready to mature beyond that.

“We want to leave the door open – to think about how to continue to do what we do, but how to do it in a different, bigger way.”

The raw-boned emotion on the Kids’ 2006 debut “Robbers & Cowards” put the quartet on the map – taking them from a Silverlake Lounge residency to national and world tours to the main stage at Coachella. But 2008’s follow-up “Loyalty to Loyalty,” was brainy and dark (especially if you consider its commercial prospects). The tracks on Cold War Kids’ new EP, “Behave Yourself!” aren’t really new songs but tunes that emerged from the “Loyalty” sessions. “They felt more like our early songs,” Willett says, “and for how brooding ‘Loyalty’ was, the songs didn’t make any sense on there.”

Willett says that as he and bassist Maust watched the U2 documentary “Rattle and Hum” recently, it occurred to them that Cold War Kids might be at a similar juncture in their career. “Not that we’re anything close to U2, but the way they talked about their career … They were at point where they’d done everything they could do, and when they got together [for “Achtung Baby” with producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois], they gave their music this bigger landscape,” Willett says.

“It’s not that we’ve done all we can do, but I think we can take the organic stuff that we do and stretch it out.”

As opposed to Cold War Kids’ albums and EPs – most of which were recorded in almost-live, one-take fashion – this one won’t be DIY, not with a producer the likes of King on board.

“I think we’re embracing the idea of having his input,” Willett says. “Having somebody to fight with is what we need – we’ve fought enough with ourselves the past four years. He has a strong presence and a strong reputation, and we’re fortunate to have that caliber a person to work with.”

As for the songs, Willett says the band will arrive in Nashville with the material mapped out but “not totally finished,” leaving the quartet open to creative input during the sessions. He also hints that the new songs are “much more personal” – perhaps treacherous ground for a songwriter known for his character sketches and storytelling.

“They still might be character songs, but I want to feel like I’m telling my story,” he says. “Of course, then I do the dangerous thing as a musician and ask myself, ‘Is this the direction I want to go?’ We never thought that hard about anything in the past – to think like that is to be a careerist.”

But if there is one notion that’s become evident during Cold War Kids’ time at home, it’s that they do indeed have a career.

“I think we’ve realized,” Willett says, “that it’s an OK thing for this band to be bigger than the four of us are individually.”

||| Live: Cold War Kids, supported by Alec Ounsworth of Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, perform tonight at the Wiltern.

Photo of Cold War Kids performing in March at the Orpheum Theatre