Cold War Kids aren’t just revisiting its 2006 debut, Robbers & Cowards — they’ve gone back to the source and found more of the story still waiting there.
Robbers & Cowards / Complete Cowards (20th Anniversary Edition) arrives Oct. 30 via UMe, expanding the band’s first full-length with four songs that were left unfinished during the original sessions, plus six live recordings captured in the U.S. and Europe in 2007, as the album was beginning to take hold. The collection will be available as a 2LP on black vinyl, a limited-edition Brick Red vinyl pressing with alternate and new artwork and 2CD.
The anniversary project has been teased throughout the summer, with “Loyalty” and “There Goes The Night” — both songs dating back to the Robbers & Cowards era — already released in newly completed versions. The remaining unfinished tracks are “Jesse Latour” and “She Can Do No Wrong.” For frontman and primary songwriter Nathan Willett, the exercise has resembled stepping through a time portal.
“I don’t think I could ever feel as warm and nostalgic towards any music as I do towards this album,” he says. “Revisiting the music, lyrics and visuals of R&C is entering a portal back to our early days of 2004 to 2006. Before the whirlwind of tour, before this band would become our future, we came together as friends who shared inspiration and influences.”
What emerged, he recalls, was “a bluesy punky primitive soaring soulful tender and earnest kind of sound.” It was also, crucially, a period before the band had any idea where that sound might take them. “It was a blissfully naive time. We worked extremely hard with no ambitions, no industry connections, no clue,” Willett says. “What we did have was a tight knit group of friends that would hang out all hours of the night talking about music and art and life.”
Those friendships became the foundation of the band’s earliest creative world. “Our band became the center of our little scene,” Willett continues. “We were scrappy and found ways to write record and release our own music, book shows, and make new friends who shared the same language. It was a beautiful and creative period and we would never be the same again.”
Robbers & Cowards would, of course, quickly move the band beyond that insular Long Beach, Ca., scene. Propelled by “Hang Me Up To Dry,” “We Used To Vacation” and “Hospital Beds,” the album became an alt-rock touchstone. Two decades and 10 studio albums later, the group’s catalog has surpassed a billion streams worldwide, while 2015’s “First” remains one of alternative radio’s most-played songs of the past 10 years,
The new collection captures another piece of that transition with six live performances recorded in Amsterdam, Atlanta, Paris and Philadelphia in 2007. “Saint John,” “Hair Down,” “God, Make Up Your Mind,” “Passing the Hat,” “Dirt in the Ground” and “Hospital Beds” document the band during the exhilarating period when its first album was transforming from a DIY statement into a rapidly expanding career. “Saint John,” recorded at Amsterdam’s Paradiso, previously appeared on 2008’s The Paradiso Sessions; the other five performances are previously unreleased.
The anniversary set also provides a new perspective on one of the album’s most recognizable songs. Phantogram have reimagined “Hang Me Up To Dry” in heavy electronic beats, atmospheric textures and the duo’s distinctive vocals. The track is streaming now as part of a Digital Deluxe Edition, with additional artist interpretations of Robbers & Cowards songs planned for 2027. “When we had the idea to cover some songs, they were the first band we thought to ask and they made it completely their own,” Willett says.
