The Kills
Posted: Tue Nov 1, 2005 7:49 pm

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AUCKLAND - Kings Arms
Tuesday 13th December
Tickets from Real Groovy, Fast + Loose, Bunny

WELLINGTON - Indigo
Wednesday 14th December
Tickets from Real Groovy

In a recently-compiled list of the most dangerous and notorious duos of the last 100 years, you will find, right between the entries for Bonnie Parker & Clyde Barrow (stick-up artists), and Alan Vega & Martin Rev (Suicide), these two names: VV and Hotel.

Better known as The Kills, this Anglo-American, London-based pair of rock’n’roll miscreants first came to our attention with their slamming Black Rooster EP in 2002; a raw-knuckled, fuzzed-out, blood-stained set of songs recorded at Toe Rag Studios with Dr. Liam Watson (The White Stripes’ Elephant). At the time of the whole “garage-revival”, this EP was like oil leaking from a 1958 Buick into shapes of screaming demon faces on the garage floor, with VV’s off-colour vocals and Hotel’s gritty guitars backed up by a sputtering, home-assembled drum machine.

Bearing little resemblance to the revivalist movement, The Kills instead toured with fellow art-damaged creeps Primal Scream. The attention meant they were snapped by Rough Trade, and lead to the issuing of the debut full-length Keep On Your Mean Side: sick, blues-drenched punk minimalism with a serious attitude.

Things were starting to change for The Kills. Playing shows with The White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party, they prepared their second album No Wow in a studio located in a boarded-up ghost town on Lake Michigan. From there, they relocated to Chicago to record in an old porno-soundtrack studio in Chicago (chosen for its reputedly-haunted mixing console). Going from no songs to a finished record in just 47 days, No Wow was released earlier this year, “tracing of the lineage between CBGB’s and Studio 54”. Presumably, that’s a trip from degradation to decadence, if you like that kind of thing.

Now we really enter the Twilight Zone – the album spawned a hit single ‘The Good Ones’ in the UK, without sounding anything like Coldplay. There was even a remix EP, with versions supplied by DFA 1979, Chicken Lips, Tiga, and the Test Icicles.

Still unclear? Sometimes people like to pile on cool reference points, just to get a handle on what appears to be happening. For those people, then: the (Blue) Velvet Underground, the (Teenage) Jesus & Mary Chain; and, for Superman fans, the Bizarro-Raveonettes. Others might cite Royal Trux or Polly Jean Harvey. But there’s no reason to get all hung up on what is sort-of, when we should be attentive to what is. The Kills. Remember what ”the kids” want to do “in the basement”? Now’s your chance to be reminded.

RE: The Kills
Posted: Fri Dec 8, 2006 12:37 pm

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