Friday, March 25th 2011

Reviews:  The Kills

The Kills Rise Higher With ‘Blood Pressures’

By Fernando Scoczynski Filho

The Kills, the duo of singer Alison Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince, has been fairly inactive for quite a while now. The female half of the band spent the last few years recording and touring with The Dead Weather, a project that garnered much attention due to the presence of Jack White. Now that The Dead Weather are on an indefinite hiatus, Alison and Jamie have finally returned to their partnership to record their fourth LP, Blood Pressures. Coming three years after their much-acclaimed Midnight Boom, it will certainly draw attention from a large amount of Dead Weather fans who are curious about Alison’s “other group” (and who will quickly realize that she actually has a rather beautiful singing voice).

Throughout the majority of Midnight Boom, The Kills stepped away from their comfort zone, dropping the raw blues/punk of the first two records in favor of a brighter, more pop-oriented sound. The duo has matured greatly in their artistry, and the album’s best and most memorable moments happened when they embraced their newfound ability to produce pure pop gold, resulting in some of their best songs yet (such as Black Balloon). That being said, one could guess that a follow-up album wouldn’t steer too far from the cheerfulness of their third LP; however, as it turns out, Blood Pressures is as stylistically different from its direct predecessor as it could be.

This LP marks a bit of a return to the darker side of the band – it retains the moodiness from Keep On Your Mean Side, but it’s not nearly as aggressive as No Wow, creating for a vibe that’s more often than not quite gloomy. As usual, Jamie Hince’s dark, menacing guitar is extremely versatile, using particular effects to set the appropriate tone on each song, but never quite sounding like he’s showing off his pedal collection. This, accompanied by crashing beats, creates a creeping, ominous march that moves slowly without ever losing its sense of urgency. This march is a common characteristic amongst most of the tracks on Blood Pressures, holding especially true for Satellite and DNA‘s choruses, the former being comprised of a wordless choir, and the latter fearlessly repeating “We will not be moved by it“.

However different in attitude Blood Pressures might seem to be from Midnight Boom, that’s not to say that The Kills have abandoned pop hooks, as they are still present throughout, although not always pushed to the forefront. On Heart Is a Beating Drum, for instance, the rhythm is as fast and captivating as any of the radio hits produced by the band in the past, but the guitar alternates between a slow, subdued section and a frantic guitar riff, making for a cut that could easily be a 3-minute verse-chorus-verse throwaway, but here becomes a fully accomplished song. Even on the few tracks that are closer to the 3-minute mark, such as You Don’t Own The Road and Nail In My Coffin, the energy is kept at a level high enough to leave the listener wishing for more when it’s over (although Nail tries a bit too hard, admittedly).

Almost every cut here is multi-layered and rich in texture to a point where it’s nearly impossible to tell you’re listening to a duo, but not to a point where it’s impossible for them to perform any of these jams live. Jamie and Alison’s vocals complement each other wonderfully, and they also play lead/base guitar sections in a way that makes the songs flow easily, especially considering that these tracks are, for the most part, longer than what the group was accustomed to in the past. In addition to that, there’s the welcome addition of the occasional keyboard, and the fact that even the electronic beats here fit in an uncommonly natural manner. Never before have The Kills sounded like such a “complete” band. Look no further than Baby Says, an alluringly sorrow song that evokes some of the best elements of Joy Division, for a perfect demonstration of the aforementioned characteristics.

On all previous Kills records, they have followed something of a rule when it came to the position of slow songs in the tracklist: there are usually two of them, distinctively mellow in comparison to the rest of the album, mostly acoustic, and usually standing out as some of the best the band has to offer. The stronger ballad is positioned deep into the second half of the LP, and the softer one always closes the album. Blood Pressures stays true to that layout. Ignoring Wild Charms, a very short number that acts as more of a palate cleanser for the first half, we have two ballads: The Last Goodbye & Pots And Pans. The first, as the title hints at, is a heavy-hearted piano ballad, accompanied by mournful keyboards, that doesn’t particularly stand out.

Pots and Pans, on the other hand, starts off as a fairly standard blues song, made more interesting by Jamie’s shredding on the acoustic guitar. However, at the 2:40 mark, a heavily distorted and echoed electric guitar kicks in, then followed by Alison’s multi-tracked chant of “These are the days we’ll never forget / When the dawn dawns on you,” repeated several times, as the song slowly fades away. The way in which the combination of the haunting guitar and chant hits the listener is unbelievably powerful, so much that “wall of sound” wouldn’t begin to describe it. It’s arguably one of the best things The Kills have made so far, and an impeccable way to close the record on a high note.

Listen to Pots and Pans:

Blood Pressures might not be as commercially attractive as The Kills’ previous work, or rock quite as hard as the ones that came before that, but it contains their most carefully, tightly constructed and balanced music so far. Each of the eleven songs here reveals a level of complexity that was unknown to fans of the group until know, and is every bit as satisfying as the more immediately accessible material produced in the past – if not moreso. The band take their sweet time to settle into each melody, never hurrying their way out of a song, showing that not only a refusal to stick to any past formulas, but how much they’ve grown as songwriters as well.