Did The Kills Kill in Boston?
Catching the hot British-American duo on a cool Friday night
Long time, no Kills.
Nearly eight years, in fact, since I saw the dynamic British-American duo, singer-sometime guitarist Alison Mosshart and guitarist-sometime singer Jamie Hince, play a Boston club. At that time, they were touring behind a strong album, Ace & Ice, and were augmented by a drummer and bassist.
Not so this time, both in terms of the tour personnel (none save themselves) and new album. God Games, their first in seven years, is not up to a lot of their previous work. Which presented something of a conundrum at the packed Boston concert at the Royale Club on Feb. 23, considering they drew so much of their 75-minute set from it – nine of 19 songs, to be precise. And only one, “Baby Says,” from what’s arguably their best, 2011’s Blood Pressures.
VIDEO: The Kills “Baby Says”
But the good stuff first: It kicked off with “Kissy Kissy,” as Kills concerts so often do, and it was total frenzy. Both Hince and Mosshart had guitars strapped on, with a juggernaut of triggered rhythmic loops behind him, churning out this torrent of aggro sound. It put me in the world of My Bloody Valentine, Prodigy or Big Black for a bit. An onslaught of big slabs of conjoined melody, rhythm and distortion, with Mosshart relentlessly singing “It’s been a long time coming!”
It’s a song about fantasized revenge – what’s been a long time is her desire to burn or stab your “kissy mouth” – but out in the audience you could also think, as I said at the top, a Kills shows has been a long time coming. It’s also kind of a mindfuck, realizing that they began back in 2002. It doesn’t seem that long ago, but time flies, right? And the Covid-19 lockdown knocked everything out of whack: the missing years for every band and every fan of every band.
Mosshart unstrapped for the next one, “U.R.A. Fever,” and, free of guitar, was even more uninhibited in her electrified ragdoll gyrations, her blonde tresses whipping every which way. The key phrases: “I ain’t born typical!” and then “We ain’t typical!” making it seem like in this song the lovers were caught up in a fever hotter than a pepper sprout.
Hince and Mosshart each spent a bit of time on keyboards. But for his part, Hince mostly loved jerking about, stretching his guitar cord and playing with an Andy Gill-like fierceness. Keep in mind, Hince suffered a severe and very ugly tendon accident to his fretting hand in 2013, and had to relearn or restructure his guitar technique.
He told me this tale in 2016: He’d slammed his left hand in a car door and underwent multiple surgeries. The damage that remained was to his left middle finger – he had just five percent usage – and it forced him to adapt.
“I’m fine with it,” he said. “It’s a bit more strain on my other fingers. I’m in pain more, but I play guitar better. I’ve had to think about it a lot more. It used to be that my heart was in tune with my hands, but now it’s my brain and it makes for better guitar. I was always more about the right hand, strumming, and I was never a very orthodox guitar player. I always operated with that notion that ideas were more important than ability, so I just had to adapt my ideas a bit.
Hince said he could no longer play major barre chords, which require four fingers; he could play minor barre chords, where the middle finger is lifted. “I spent a lot of time transposing certain chords and learning how to play them a different way where I use my index finger and my little finger and my ring finger.”
Anyway, back to the gig. Following “U.R.A. Fever” was another angry one called “Love and Tenderness.” What stuck out was the serpentine Mosshart snarling, “Sweet dreams, my ass/All my love and tenderness/All your thoughts and prayers/May your cross to bear be/The death of love and tenderness.”
The Kills are a serious band, serious about fun, yes, but also about mixing in anxiety, angst and tension. Slabs of darkness and noise abound. Mostly, the Kills played as if a locomotive was rattling along behind them, with the human duo straddling the abrasive/enticing line of fury. A few songs later, the rhythmic underpinning of “Tape Song,” curiously conjured up The Cure’s “Let’s Go to Bed” in my head.
But at some point – midway? – a certain repetitiveness set in and while I’m OK with the everything-else-on-a-loop concept, I missed the flesh and blood input of a bassist and drummer, as well as dynamics that could involve four, not just two, people.
As to aural assault, look, I’m someone who’s been known to wade into Swans-world and stay there for two hours, transfixed. Now, that’s an endurance test of mind and body. The Kills don’t play at Swans-level volume, so it’s not that, but the layers that we often hear on record – and I did hear last time I saw them live – weren’t really there. They ground it out, they put their all into it, but they didn’t really build a bonfire out of the great kindling they lay down early on.
The counter to that was the final encore song, “Sour Cherry,” where Mosshart again strapped on the guitar – bookending the beginning the show, I suppose – and the two furiously rocked out, raising the roof to where I wish it had been throughout the entire show.
VIDEO: The Kills “Sour Cherry” Live at Coachella
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Wish they played in Rochester, Buffalo, or even Syracuse NY. What about CCFL!?