The Kills - Tape Song

(Muso's Guide, November 27 2008)

Single review

(Domino Records)

There is a market for everything. Salesmen will tell you that and, in 2008, everyone’s a salesman, baby. If you think you’re unique, unheard of, dizzyingly different, chances are the powers that be can shove you into an attractive package in less time than it takes to say “I hate myself and want to die”.

Step forward The Kills. British Moss-acolyte Jamie Hince took his priapic axe halfway to meet American Alison Mosshart’s squally blues banshee first time round in 2001 and it’s only gotten dirtier since then.

If you think such filthy guitar greatness evades capture, you’d be wrong. The very exciting and sometime cutting edge Kills quickly became a “blues duo in the mould of the White Stripes” for the uninitiated, and after the prickly Keep On Your Mean Side garnered them these and similar epithets, 2005’s No Wow was a concerted effort to escape what had gone before - the prepacked, homogenised boy/girl twosome template.

Revitalised and back on the block, the band’s third record Midnight Boom hit the airwaves about nine months ago now, and it’s been quite a year for the kids most likely to drop out and disappear. Kicking off with the habitual Kills drum machine sound, ‘Tape Song’ is nothing like a departure. Complete with a suitably jerky video, there’s a package up for grabs here. The two misfits, living the rock dream because they’re just too darned maverick to fit in anywhere else. What a sales pitch that old chestnut is.

Twangy guitars break the beat and Mosshart’s feline vocal stretching across the first four bars with a yowling intensity. Hince’s jabbing guitar gives shape to the beat, and from there it’s a small leap into the song - “Tape ain’t gonna fix it honey, it ain’t gonna stick to you”, presumably meaning it’s more sticky tape than the chromium sort.

There’s a degree of chaos in Mosshart’s work here. She is, as ever, a woman on the edge of the rock abyss, spitting and snarling every line like a character in a Chuck Palahniuk novel. Hince, in comparison, offers a completely methodical approach, dropping guitar stabs like breadcrumbs for Mosshart to pick up.

From the old days of VV and Hotel, The Kills have matured like a particularly pungent dairy product, and ‘Tape Song’ is the sound of a couple of skilled salesmen. With all the balls and rock’n'roll persona of Patti Smith, Mosshart is a frontwoman who compromises with no one - except Hince, whose Lou Reed-isms would be nauseating if they weren’t so damned spot on.

The Kills - outsider rock that sells like teen spirit.