Is it a hit, *hit or miss?

The Kills – No Wow  by David Demarest

The Kills – No Wow
Label: RCA
Hit, *hit or Miss?:  Hit
Rating: 

From the very start, I looked forward to hating The Kills.  Everything I’d read about them, everything that came from their fans or from their press kit or from their own mouths convinced me that here was a band that dealt in the culture of cool, for whom image is more important than the music.  They talked about the small, dark pubs where they played, not caring if anyone heard or not, and about what a joke it all was…slumming it.  The press kit, I swear to you, came reeking of stale cigarettes, like the dives they’d played on the day after the show.  I’m sure it was faked.  

And I hate the idea:  This image driven rock, more posture than punk.  So when I popped in their new album, No Wow (suitably dark, don’t you think?) it was really only to gather more stones to chuck at the two band members, VV and Hotel (names they gave each other because, face it, Alison and Jamie just don’t have that grimy thrift store appeal).  But then the strangest thing happened:  Just a few seconds into their first song I realized, “Hey, this is good.  REALLY good.”  And it is.

In fact, if I want to keep believing that image shouldn’t reflect one way or another on the musical quality, then I have to face up to the fact that even if I don’t like The Kills’ image, their music is the real thing.  Making matters worse, it just gets better the more you listen to it.  Musically, there is no posturing, no faking a pose or reaching for a style that doesn’t seem natural.  More than anything else, No Wow represents the work of two artists who are both very talented and very comfortable in the music that they’ve made.  It’s rock and roll bare knuckled and stripped down of any unnecessary adornment, and what’s left is the bare architecture of talent.  

Alison (VV) carries most of the vocals with a voice that is both smoky and clear, seductive and powerful.  She’ll hook you first.  Jamie (Hotel) takes a little longer to notice.  He brings in the guitar and the backing drum tracks, sometimes using a cheap, 80’s style drum machine, and other times manufacturing the beats entirely on his guitar.  Jamie holds up his end of the music as much with what you hear as with what is left out.  The sound is sparse but powerful, and there are no mistakes.  Nothing extra that might take away from the delicate balance of a sound built entirely through the talents of these two artists. 

The Kills are not quite like anything that I’ve heard before, and perhaps that’s why I like them so much.  There are tracks that give the impression of a studio mike left on while two very serious people are having a goof…it comes from the spare sound.  You can hear exactly how many people aren’t in the studio making the recordings.

Whatever else The Kills are into, they’re definitely into making good music- making their own good music.  No Wow is not an album with premeditated hooks or flash.  It’s raw, it’s powerful, and No Wow will win you over.  
 
 

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