Cold War Kids keep it classy

"Hopefully no one's ever fallen off that thing," Nathan Willett says to the crowd. He's talking about Terminal 5's second story balcony, closed off by a flimsy wired fence. Slip past the plastic beer cups and chatty twentysomethings and sit with your feet hanging over the ledge — from a bird's eye view, you get an intimate look into the Cold War Kids' on-stage relationships.

Lead vocalist and pianist Nathan Willett turns toward bandmate Matt Maust while Jonnie Russell switches between tambourine shakes and bass plucks. The frantic rapport between the three of them is a cross between a dance-off and a musical speed dating session, a performance not just for the fans, but also for each other. Drummer Matt Aveiro hangs out in the back; he knows how to hit a drum without abusing it, so he keeps producing a calm and steady beat. If it weren't for his obligation to the drum seat, he'd be out there bouncing too.

Five years ago, the boys from Long Beach, Calif. debuted with an EP titled "Mulberry Street," named for the Italian restaurant above which they used to hold their jam sessions. But this quick return to New York shows that they are no longer the kids of their past.

"What's going on here, gentlemen?" Willett questions a pack of screeching, body-banging guys who have been attempting to crowd-surf (and miserably failing). "You know, it's fun music, but it's not rowdy music," he instructs them. "This is about love here." Last month, the band released an EP called "Behave Yourself." Clearly, they are sticking to their word.

In fact, the band's classy personality is a refreshing retreat from indie music's most recent incarnation (i.e., psychedelia with a computer). The CWK's music is basic indie-pop but topped with a mysterious finishing coat. Their songs possess the melancholy of one of J.D. Salinger's "Nine Stories" (Salinger appropriately received a song dedication) or a Joan Didion essay (Didion, too, got a shout-out during "Santa Ana Winds").

Willett is even confident enough to play with his voice a bit, dragging out the lyrics to the new hit "Audience," a song about "playing for an audience of one." He belches, "three's too many" and "two's too busy," concluding that "one is the only way." The audience, approximately 3,000 fans at a sold-out Terminal 5, doesn't seem to notice or care if they're too many.

Moving away from the summery Californian theme of "Hang Me Up to Dry," the band dedicates a piece entitled "Relief" to Haiti. Willett reminds the audience to keep giving their thoughts, prayers and donations to the cause, and changes his tone to something higher and more anxious.

Throughout the show, four big screens of subtle but dark images sift into and out of the background: a beautiful, sullen woman with bright red lips shown from different angles, a pair of drifting bare legs, and an Asian woman at a hospital (for the song "Hospital Beds"). After "Relief," a pounding limelight hits the stage, rotating between the band and the audience.

At the end of the night, Terminal 5 hands out business cards with outlines of a few funky (and slightly deformed) faces on them. They are silently requesting that we take the enclosed password and download the live recording of the show to relive "all the fumbles and the glory of the evening."

We will gladly oblige.

Alexandra Bolen is a contributing writer.