The New Gay Interview: Cold War Kids' Matt Aveiro Talks Storytelling, "Selling Out," and Those Little-Known Gay Rumors

Cold War Kids are, from left, Matt Aveiro, Jonnie Russell, Matt Maust and Nathan Willett.

Cold War Kids play tonight, Tuesday the 27th, at the 9:30 Club. Doors open at 8 for the lucky few who already have their tickets.

Like the unholy union of Tom Waits and Maroon 5, Long Beach, California's Cold War Kids combine unusual vocal stylings, instruments and time signatures with deceptively hummable hooks about subjects like alcoholism and debilitating illness. Their debut album "Robbers and Cowards" only came out last fall but they had already gained some internet buzz through a 2005 EP and laundry-centric lead single "Hang Me Up To Dry."

I first saw them play DC9 last October and since then their star has risen dramatically. They sold out the 9:30 Club last spring and, at the time of the interview, had two more shows scheduled there for this week. Though one was cancelled for reasons I do not know, they still managed to sell out tonight's show in advance. Their dynamic live performances and "Cute Band Alert" looks have much to do with that.

Full interview beneath the fold.

Tonight's show will be my third CWK experience and I still find the band really hard to pin down. Their shows are really great and their music is solid, but there's a huge gap between the band's fresh faces and the gin-soaked feel of their songs. I find it vaguely untrustworthy, like if Christina Aguilera covered "Strange Fruit."

Still, though, I think these guys are going to be really big and, as one of the few bands that I saw "back when," I support them all the way. I just hope they don't remember the time last spring when I waited around after the show and drunkenly extended an offer for all four of them to sleep in my attic. Trustworthy or not, four stubbly, shaggy guys in plaid and denim will always wreak havoc on my judgement.

The New Gay Zack: Last October, you guys played a show on the upstairs stage at DC9. Last spring you sold out the 9:30 club and now you have back to back shows scheduled there. How does it feel to have such an objective measure of your popularity?

Matt Aveiro: That's what you hope for, going back to the same town and having things progress. Its been reassuring to us and exciting. Its good to go to a city four times and have things to be growing every time we go.

TNG: What are your impressions of D.C.? Did you have a chance to go out at all?

AV: We've had minimal time to go out, but I personally have had a really good time. I'm sure any band will say this, but you wish you had more time in the cities [when you're touring.] I had a couple friends out there, I got to spend a little time with them. Our friend Sid from Les Savy Fav, he grew up in D.C. so we spent some time in his house, but I can't remember where it is in the city. Its a nice feel to hang out, sit in the coffee shop, do those kind of things.

TNG: You're a SoCal band. How does the California sound translate to the East Coast? How much is your music informed by where you're from?

AV: Actually, when we first started doing interview people were surprised we were from California, they said our sound was very un-California, but I do think it translates well. I think there are things that can be taken from a lot of different music styles and locations. A blues influence, some of that, a lot of Velvet Underground influences, we're coming from a bunch of different places. I don't think we've been perceived as a very Californian band.

TNG: Did you expect to get as big as you did?

AV: No, it wasn't something we spent a whole lot of time thinking about, even getting the comments of being a pop radio band, that was never in our consciousness. That would've sounded really absurd if you told us that when we were recording. We thought [that the album was] a mess, that someone would like this but it would be a select group of people. [Initially,] people would come to one show and never see us again. People close to us didn't dig us, they thought when they first saw us that there was no way they would like it again.

TNG: You get a lot of props for having elements of Tom Waits, but it's not as discussed that you're also really radio friendly. Do you feel a tension between being a "cool" band and being a popular one?

AV: I don't think there's any tension, everything thats come has come very organically. It might sound naive, but when we were writing this record in a back house in Long Beach there was no expectation of any of that. We were aware that the songs were catchy and simple, and had melodies that could be widely appreciated, but we definitely never thought of the songs in that capacity, they were never intentionally written to be that way.

TNG: The crowd at your concerts is a mix of hipsters and the frat/sorority crowd, which speaks to a perception in the media that you're a pop band posing as grunge or alternative rock. What do you have to say to this?

AV: [laughing]...How do I feel about that? I don't think its something you dwell on too much when you're at home writing a record, its a pretty silly quote. I think we made a record in Long Beach by ourselves, never having toured. Again like the Tom Waits influence and the commercial friendly thing we convey, I think all that came organically and all naturally. I don't know how we would be posing, they're very oddly structured songs. I hope if we were aiming to be a pop band we'd play on time a little more and have catchier bridges and I'd play cymbals more.

TNG: Songs like "We Used to Vacation" and "Hospital Beds" make you all sound like a bunch of 45 year-old alcoholics, not a group of young guys from the West Coast. How'd you develop such a world-weary sound?

AV: It came organically from us being together and being what came out from writing very simple, very rough songs. Lyrically too, where [lead vocalist] Nathan [Willett] is coming from is doing a lot of storytelling and trying to step outside himself and tell stories from other perspective, taking things that are very applicable to anyone's life and telling them in interesting ways. He's seeing things through these characters and that creates the character of the lyrics and the character of the song, and what the song takes on.

TNG: And not to keep bringing up this dirty word, but "Hang Me Up to Dry" was just featured on the "This Is Next" music collection, which Pitchfork nicknamed "Now Thats What I Call Indie!" Do you feel like your music loses credibility when its featured on these compilations?

AV: I think its a very difficult thing to gauge in a lot of ways, it can be very specific to the sort of fan you're talking about, how they perceive music, how they perceive how the industry works. Obviously we're conscious that some things are less cool to fans than others. For example, someone like The Walkmen doing a Saturn commercial; that can be perceived badly, but you don't know what they do with [the profits], which helps make records which helps sell music. That may sound like a cop-out, but for someone in a band where they need something financially or want their band to progress, to come back and have their shows grow, thats something that any band desires. These days there are limited ways for that to happen. Our songs get minimal radio play, so those things can be used as a tool...But its obviously not the most credible or perceived as the coolest, which we're aware of.

TNG: You're a group of cute guys that play instruments, so you probably have your share of admirers. Do you get hit on by girls a lot?

AV: Not very often, I think we're kind of haggard looking. There was a rumor going around that I was gay for a long time, so I never got hit on...which was fine by me.

TNG: How'd that happen?

AV: A bunch of people had asked 'Is your drummer gay' and it was never dispelled. We all found it somewhat interesting that that was people's interpretation of the way I handled myself. I find those things really amusing, how they get around and how people perceive the way someone plays their instrument or carries themselves. Not funny in the high school jock way, but funny in the way that its interesting.

TNG: So did you have guys trying pick you up?

AV: It hasn't happened. I don't know how widespread the rumor was. I don't know if we present ourselves as...there's certain bands that lend themselves to people asking them to their homes at night, and I think we don't present ourselves as one of those bands, which I'm proud about. Its often pretty degrading to women. Whether it be them initiating or not, its not something we're involved in.

TNG: There's a new metrosexual look of scruffy guys wearing plaid, flannel and tight jeans that CWK and a million hipster gay guys have in common. Have you noticed gay hipsters dressed like your band?

AV: If they were dressed like us, how would we notice? That would never be a conversation we would have. They'd probably think I was gay. I guess in a lot of ways its a pretty universal style, more people now are hip than not.

TNG: So when will you be working on a new album? What will it sound like?

AV: We're in the process right now, we've been writing pretty steadily for the last couple tours. We're constantly always on the mode of working on the record. After the November tour is over, probably early January, is when we're looking to go in the studio.

TNG: What will it sound like?

AV: I think it will have all the natural differences that you would expect from us playing for two years and understanding each other, from being musically and lyrically in a different place. I think its not necessarily anything dramatic. The songs are more musical, the structures are more fluid, I think that's what we're working with right now. The songs are songs I hear allowing themselves to have alot more done production wise, and have the record be more conceptual. Obviously no songs about life on the road, thats not going got happen, but of being together and understanding music and records and recording, being much stronger in those aspects.