Indie rockers the Cold War Kids have never spent too much time recording an album.
So when the band set out to record a full-length follow up to 2008's "Loyalty to Loyalty," they wanted to have a couple of months to tinker with the songs. Earlier this year, the band went into a Nashville, Tenn., studio and recorded about half the still-untitled album. Then they took a three-month break to nitpick the tunes while their producer, Jacquire King, worked with Kings of Leon.
The Cold War Kids play Artscape Saturday. A few days later, they'll head back to Music City to finish recording the album, which singer Nathan Willett hopes will be out early next year. Here, Willett talks about the good and bad sides to sitting on their songs for so long.
On the break between recording sessions
It's painful. Each record we've had has been the polar opposite of this — really quickly make decisions and write lyrics. There hasn't been a lot of rewriting. I really wanted to deliberately do it this way, just to do it a different way. The cons are obvious, but we've been able to listen to something over and over again. When you tour an album for over a year, you see all the ways a song can be better and you want to do the opposite way, where you spend a lot of time trying to work out all the kinks and everything. At the same time, we are ready to be done with it.
On the new batch of songs
The second album, "Loyalty," was darker, more morose — kind of sleepy. This is way more energetic. This has so many more moods to it. It has a lot of high-energy songs. There's a lot more to it.
On performing at festivals vs. clubs
We toured for so long before we played our first festival. You just have to wrangle an audience's attention in a different way. You have to know everybody's not watching you. I think we're used to it now. For me as a singer, you want to do a Bono-esque Live Aid run out into the audience to get everybody to really pay attention to you, or climb up something. But because I know me and I don't do those things, you have to hope the music commands attention. And if it doesn't, you have to accept it.
If you go
The Cold War Kids perform at 6:30 p.m. Saturday at Artscape's Wachovia stage.