Album Review: Mine is Yours by Cold War Kids

You ever hear an album and you don't know what it is, but something just isn't right.  That's how I feel about this one.  I can't really put my finger on what I don't like about it, and it's not bad, but it's not good either.

These guys are borrowing from U2, like so many others do, trying to build a stadium rock sound, think Kings of Leon, but there is something off with their sound.  I know nothing about these guys but I listened to some of their earlier stuff and obviously they have gone from being a band recording in a garage to being a band playing in front of large audiences and they are trying to grow their sound to fill the space, but layering the U2 stadium effect on top of their base sound just doesn't seem to work to me. 

In the end I think my biggest problem is with their singer.  He is such a focal point of their sound and he just doesn't have the voice to pull off the kind of music he's trying to sing.  He's got a good pop voice, but not the kind of voice to sing a big stadium anthem song.  If you are going to borrow so heavily from U2, you are going to lead your listeners to expect a strong, soulful voice that can fill all of that open space left by the reverb. 

I could see playing this while taking a family tour of the Jackson Purchase.

Following the Rhapsody rating method I give it 2 out of 5 stars for Not Bad.