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WGN Radio Article/Interview: The Kills' killer chemistry
Greg Kot Music critic
10:29 p.m. CST, January 15, 2012
The most stunning moment on the latest Kills’ album, “Blood Pressures” (Domino), is the one that’s perhaps most out of character. Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince have long been celebrated for their scuzzy take on electro-blues and punk, but the song “The Last Goodbye” puts them in a decrepit lounge at closing time, delivering a sparse, tough-but-tender ballad.
“I wrote that song in literally five minutes, as long as it takes to play it,” Mosshart says. “It just fell out of the sky, the lyric, melody and guitar part came together in one go. But it changed dramatically. It used to be kind of a Patsy Cline song in four-four (time). It was a little more bluesy, a little more straight, so we tried to find a way to make it more interesting. We started roaming around the studio in a circle playing different instruments, trying different meters, and then Jamie started playing the Optigan (a ‘70s keyboard). And I said, ‘That’s it.’ That completed the song.”
The Optigan put the appropriate wobble in the song, keeping it in step with the duo’s slightly skewed sensibility, and illustrating once again the chemistry between the two seemingly unlikely collaborators.
The two met in the late ‘90s when Florida native Mosshart was touring England, where Hince had already put in a decade with various bands. They bonded on outsider art and music, and saw an opportunity to start over, with no rules. At first they collaborated long-distance, shipping tapes between Florida and London, until Mosshart moved to the U.K. in 2000.
“We were rubbish as a band at first, but I always felt there was something there that said we should keep going, because it felt bigger than both of us combined,” says the singer, who financed the Kills’ first tour with her credit card. “I don’t think he felt that confident in us at first; he was just going along with this crazy girl (laughs). But when we sat together and played guitars for the first time, I knew it was going to work.”
Her confidence has been rewarded with four studio albums that have brought the duo increasing acclaim and enabled them to play concerts in front of ever-larger audiences. Though the music has expanded, the “band” has not – Mosshart and Hince sing and play all the instruments, aided only by recorded drum tracks on stage. They come from a long tradition of stripped-down bands that have used drum machines to devastating effect, including Suicide and Big Black, and they have no plans to change that approach anytime soon.
“We thought there would be someone else, but early on we realized how difficult it was just to find each other, how amazing that was, and so how the hell do we find someone else to fit in with this two-person gang we created?” Mosshart says with a laugh. “We were always so secretive, so immersed in what we were doing, that it almost seemed like an impossibility to bring someone else in. Over the years, we’ve gotten a little better at working with other people. We’ve even worked with some drummers as the stages got bigger and bigger, but creatively it’s always been just Jamie and I. I have a feeling that’s the way it will be until we wake up from this little dream of ours.”
Drums and drum machines nonetheless have always played a vital role in shaping each album’s sound. “Every time we go into making a record, the drums dictate a new kind of sound,” Mosshart says. “We change up what we play – Jamie played live drums on the first one and we looped them. We used a cheap Rhythm King drum machine on the second album and an early hip-hop sampler on (third album) ‘Midnight Boom,’ and then a more current MPC (Music Production Center drum machine) on ‘Blood Pressures.’ Jamie set up an MPC station with headphones and was toiling away at all hours, jumping around the studio to no music except the drum sounds, and getting really excited. That transformed the way the record sounds. For us the drums are the backbone, they dictate the sound, and we have to match that with the songwriting and the vibe.”
The drums may be the backbone, but the heart and soul is the dynamic between Hince and Mosshart, in the studio and especially on stage, where their give-and-take showmanship dramatizes the violence and tension in the music.
“I would say it’s never comfortable being on stage, it’s always terrifying,” she says. “That fear and those nerves make it what it is. You’re on stage facing a bunch of people playing something you put your whole heart and soul into. There’s so much different energy flying around. The idea of it is so insane, but it makes us react a certain way. I can’t remember doing good shows. You come off and it’s like you went somewhere else. And then there are shows where things are breaking and the sound is bad, and you’re thrown out of that dream world and you have to face the reality that it is not going how you want it to go.”
When all else fails, the Kills inevitably salvage the evening by just being themselves – two people with an undefined chemistry.
“I think some of it has to do with just watching a male and female interact onstage,” Mosshart says. “It allows a lot of flipped scripts. You get both sides of the stories, you get role changes, confusion, you get everything. But it’s also precarious. I don’t want to dissect something that works, but you can feel the difference straight away when something works and is meant to be and when it’s not. It makes you appreciate how hard it is to find that person, that band, that thing that works. You can go through your whole musical career looking for it. So I feel lucky to be hear talking about it now.”
greg@gregkot.com
The Kills: 8 p.m. Friday at the Riviera, 4746 N. Racine, $24; etix.com.
Q&A: The Kills' Alison Mosshart Talks the Dead Weather, Discount, and 90210
Discount played every skate park or house that would open their doors to them. Since she was under 18, they didn’t play bars very often. When they did, it was a problem. “I wasn’t really allowed in the places I was playing,” Mosshart remembers waiting outside at venues to be allowed in only to perform. Though the band went its separate ways in 2000, Mosshart says she saw all of her former bandmates over the holidays.
Their fourth, Blood Pressures, was released last year demonstrating a quirky set of sounds, including a track with a touch of reggae. When asked if there was anything that influenced this album, Mosshart says, “We both tend to not listen to anything in the studio except for what we’re working on. There’s always that fear that something of someone else’s will get in your head and somehow find its way into your music.”
They’re too focused on not repeating themselves, she notes, saying, “We’re trying to do a record we haven’t done before.” Those that resemble songs on previous albums are discarded.
The Kills Eccentric Car Collection MTV Interview
(Source: youtube.com)
The Kills: The Last Goodbye
Samantha Morton Helms an Emotive Music Video Portrait of the Rock Duo
The Kills celebrate 10 years of musical partnership with this poignant and playful video, directed by Oscar nominated actress Samantha Morton. The captivating, melancholic song “The Last Goodbye” offsets the hard-edged sound Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince are known for with haunting vocals and a nostalgic piano loop. “I wanted to make it completely different from anything we’d normally do”, explains Hince. “I used an octagon keyboard from the 60s which takes flexi-discs with real bands playing and mixes them together.” For the video—an experience Hince and Mosshart usually find unfulfilling and frustrating—the duo enlisted the talents of Morton, who made her directorial feature debut this year with The Unloved. Shot in monochrome on crisp, silvery 35mm, the video reflects the beautiful simplicity of the track, with an old-school photo booth providing an intimate backdrop for Mosshart’s intense and heart-warming opening performance followed by a series of touching to-camera poses reflecting the musicians’ longstanding, spirited friendship. “Life goes on,” says Mosshart of the touching ballad. “It starts off being the end of the world but then ends up alright.” Here Mosshart and Hince share their memories of their first meeting and a decade of collaboration.
Alison on Jamie:
“When I first met him I thought he was the coolest guy in the world; I was completely fascinated by him. I had an immediate desire to do something with him – it was the best decision I’ve ever made. We’ve had so much fun over the past twelve years. I’ll never forget our first gig—February 14 2002 in front of 70 people. It was the scariest moment of our lives. We couldn’t believe we were doing it. We’d spent six months booking the tour, by letters as it was before email. We stayed wherever we could, going on the greatest adventure of our lives. By the end of the tour the rooms were full because of word of mouth. I remember those first years so clearly because you’re so involved and so in charge of your destiny. I don’t take any of this for granted—it’s still as exciting and interesting and there’s still more to discover.”
Jamie on Alison:
“In 2000, I was in another band and she was staying in the apartment below. Se would sit outside my window and listen to me play guitar, a bit like a stalker. When we first met, she was painfully shy. She’d grown up in a skate scene in Florida so she wasn’t really aware of any bands. It felt incredible to be able to introduce her to the music I loved. She absorbed it all and loved it all. The first time I saw her perform was like watching Patti Smith for the first time. This awkward little sparrow on stage just had so much confidence and was obviously so comfortable performing. It was fascinating. I thought if I was going to be in another band it was going to be with her. She’s my best friend and has been in every aspect of my life.”
Midnight Boom Era The Kills Interview with Supersweet Magazine
“The Kills is a lifestyle and partnership for us…[We] would be doing it with or without a record label. It’s our life. It’s what we do.” Jamie’s words are aired with an honest fathom – like a person’s unalterable belief in the celestial – during our ten minute conversation over a muffled phone line. He speaks with a broken middleclass eloquence, often pausing for thought and reiterating points of expression and beliefs with conviction. Their first meeting was a chance encounter at a gig in South London around the turn of the Millennium: Alison Mosshart was on a tour of Europe with her band at the time, Discount, a punk rock band from her home state of Florida. As the story goes, Jamie – who had recently disbanded with his group Scarfo – watched Alison’s performance with beguile. The connection that was made that night was of love, lust and desire, but not of a libidinous nature; however, it was one that wished to procreate music, a scene, a lifestyle, a sense of understanding and unity: something new. The two exchanged details and began their transatlantic correspondence: letters, artwork, tapes (of their music; of themselves musing in solitary conversation), and the occasional phone call was sent. What was received marked the beginning: The Kills. A relationship was formed over a platonic harmony, understanding and infatuation for – amongst other things – the likes The Velvet Underground, Warhol’s Factory scene and modern revolutionary movements. Alison packed her effects and few to London to live with Jamie in his flat in Gypsy Hill. Together, their shared beliefs and philosophies lived in close proximity as their musical renaissance began to mature. “I’m currently sat in a pub working out how to get to Northampton,” Jamie coyly admits as I finally get through to him after thirty minutes of trying, “its not far is it?” I ingratiatingly search for train times and road directions on the internet as he begins to divulge his reasons behind his tardiness and recent events. “I over slept and the tour bus left without me. We played at Koko in London [last night]. It’s a weird event when you play in London; you build it up so much and make yourself nervous….” It’s hard to comprehend the likes of The Kills getting nervous before a gig. Their nonchalant and imperturbable rock and roll demure resonates from magazine interviews, aesthetically artistic photo shoots and aurally reconstructive sound that has reverberated since their conception; they are literal bellwethers of ‘Indie Cool’. Recording with Liam Watson at Toe Rag Studios in March 2002, the pair – answering to the monikers of “VV” (Mosshart) and “Hotel” (Hince) – released their rough-edged, blues-rooted four track debut Black Rooster EP via Domino Records that summer. Lo-fi in music, aesthetic and style, little was known about the pair as they shunned interviews and the draw of music industry hype in favour of their hybrid beliefs and punk manifestos. Much had been made of their raw, subversive live performances: the pair stood facing, gazing into each other’s eyes in an introverted manner, paying little attention to the crowds that had gathered before them as their name began to spread with humble underground utterances and acknowledgements. The tension that they built-up on stage was of artistic value; to watch them play for the first time in 2003 at the Carling Leeds Festival was a bewildering moment for one’s self. Their unrefined stage demeanour, Parisian-kitsch attired and emancipated aural extractions had left their mark. “You have to give it everything you’ve got. It’s life or death out there,” Jamie commented with an aggressive intonation as we began to talk openly, “I knew from a really early ages this is what I wanted to do. “I got into obscure punk bands like Flux Of Pink Indians – bands that made a lot of noise and just band an attitude,” he continued to reminisce with a childlike zeal. “They made it easier to think that you didn’t have to be any good. You could just hit a guitar and shout about something that you believed in.” This raw mind-set has bequeathed The Kills in their approach towards making music. Their first two studio album releases, Keep On Your Mean Side and No Wow, rattled with a boundless artistic integrity, devoid of any obvious influences. Their own artwork and photography graced the covers, exerts from the tapes that they had sent each other of nonsensical mumblings sat perplexingly amongst metronomically structured drumbeats, warbling vocals and guitars free from restraint. The Kills had something to say: they were devotees. “[With Midnight Boom] we wanted to get to a point of making a record that never really had any form of overt influences upon it. We banned music from the studio and stopped listening to other people’s and just played our own stuff. What we were left with were just the influences that were in our blood – like The Velvet Underground and ESG – stuff that we cannot shake.” Jamie begin to divulge about their obsession for an 18-minute documentary film called Pizza Pizza Daddy-O, an anthropological study set in inner-city LA, it examined the games played in the playground by young Black girls in 1968. In the film, groups of girls gather playfully singing, clapping and dancing; but the contents of the songs are of darkness, death and the brutal truths of growing up in such a time and heritage. The children’s repetition of phrases for emphasis and chant-like call and response style were adopted and placed upon the new albums maelstrom of contorted effects and cathartic spats for incantational results of artistic integrity and dexterity. “I don’t really pay much attention to the reviews and stuff; I’m always a bit baffled by that part of it,” Jamie admits before he continues humbly and with a quiet honesty, “but the new tracks have been going down well.” We continue discussing the presses impact on a musician’s career and what his expectations were touring the new material for the first time: “We’ve often wondered why we go down so well in Europe, but it differs from country to country. It’s weird and completely different how some get it and some don’t. “England is tough because of how the press works. The NME is so important because it’s a weekly and forever churning out new bands, making and finding scenes.” There is a lamenting tone to his voice as he persists with his retort, “Many [bands] get abused and left to one side. It’s [the NME] a flagship for new music and I don’t know why people seem to put so much trust in it, like it’s the be all and end all.” His riposte is one of discontent, the sound of a wounded soul that would perpetually fight for his artistic expression; empowered and impassioned. “It makes the attitude to music so different. So influential. It’s like Heat Magazine for a different generation,” he finishes, trying to jest-away his cathartic release. We continue to talk about powers that be and whom they affect most, the artist: “Most record companies seem to be happy with getting a band to write a record, record the record, promote the record, tour the record, and that’s the life of most bands; but there are so many things outside of that that I wish labels would help you with.” Jamie begins to explain in endearing terms how good their relationship is with Domino Records and its “collective spirit” and “unity” amongst the bands: “They’re a purely independent, unique label, and we signed to them for that reason. Laurence [Bell, Domino’s founder] has a great taste in music and has become a really good friend.” He begins to describe the label as a “modern Motown, one of those classics that just had all the best bands,” and how they have helped them achieve not only inside the music industry, but has also encouraged artistry further a field. “We have just finished exhibiting a thousand Polariods and a video installation in the Baltic Gallery which is now moving to Brussels. Our life is consumed by the arts.” We talk about the future and life outside of the band: “The Kills is a life style and partnership for us,” he explains unbegrudgingly, “we rarely get a day off.” “We’ve got two or three songs for the new record but that could all change. I’ve toyed with the idea of working outside [The Kills]; I’d like to do something with Jason Pierce [Spiritualized] and Scott [Patterson of Sons and Daughters].” Our time together draws to a close, but there is still one question that we really wanted to ask: The Smoking Ban. Discuss. “It makes me so f**cking angry! It’s pointless! Why can’t we have just a room to smoke in like normal?” he explodes with sorrow, “They say it’s for the health of the workers, but that’s b******t! They have tried to dismantle all the Trade Unions – they couldn’t give a f**k about them!” Jamie’s pugnacious retort exemplifies The Kills’ militant stance and infiltration into the music industry: reincarnating aloof evocations with avant-garde audacity and impunity. Midnight Boom maintains this, transcending sincerity, angst, artistry and pretension with lustful effects. In the same vein as their all inspiring predecessors The Velvet Underground, this may not be the band for all adhere towards, but this is a band that represents a movement and declaration to those who wish to be inclined.
(Source: supersweet.org)
The group’s fourth album, “Blood Pressures,” released April 5 on Domino, is the garage-rock duo’s darker and dirtier return from a hiatus and follow-up to 2008’s breakthrough “Midnight Boom.” Mosshart says that she and guitarist Jamie Hince are happy to road-test the new material, especially at festivals like Lollapalooza.
“My favorite part is when bands I like play the same day, and you get to hang out with people,” she says. “Some summers it’s really great, you’re just kind of traveling the world together and playing all the same places, so it’s really fun.”
Last week the London-based group perked up music blogs with their stunning cover of Marilyn Monroe’s “One Silver Dollar” during an Australian acoustic session for Triple J studios. Mosshart jumped at the opportunity to cover the screen siren’s obscure 1954 recording.
“I’ve played it to a lot of people, and everyone becomes obsessed with it immediately,” she says. “That’s a song I’ve really always liked. I’ve always kind of played that song to myself and hoped that Jamie and I would do it at some point.”
While not alongside Hince onstage, Mosshart is one-fourth of the Nashville supergroup the Dead Weather, which features Jack White. The singer says that the writing process for the Kills and the Dead Weather couldn’t be more different.
“Jamie and I… both individually write quite a lot of material and bring it to each other,” says Mosshart. “A band like the Dead Weather writes completely spontaneously — four people in a room, press record, play together.” As for new material from the Dead Weather, Mosshart insisted the subject hasn’t even been breached. “We haven’t talked about it, thought about it, nothing.” She continued, “Right now I’m focusing on this record and Jack is doing his thing. It’s as simple as that.”
After performing in New York this Monday, the Kills will head overseas for a European tour.
(Source: Billboard)
FEATURES: The Kills
“People that are scared of doing what they want look at you and say, ‘Oh, you just don’t give a shit, do you?’ And it’s not true.”
Ike and Tina Turner. Sonny and Cher. Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin. Jack and Meg White. Just a few famous male-female collaborations that have struck gold when they combined their talents but all sadly came to an end.
Not true for the Kills, which continue to meld the gifts of sexy American vocalist Alison Mosshart and English axeman Jamie Hince for an alchemic blend of lo-fi garage and acoustic blues.
Yet unlike the aforementioned duos, Hince and Mosshart’s 12-year relationship has never gone beyond platonic.
After extensively touring North America, The Kills have returned to Europe for festival season and more live dates, conjuring support for their fourth full-length release, Blood Pressures, and perpetuating their romanticized legacy and unique dynamic . AUX caught up with Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince in Toronto before their gig at the Sound Academy, where we talked about their humble beginnings, what makes them magical and how what they do isn’t a choice.
(Source: aux.tv)
The Kills backstage at One Shot Not with footage of DNA acoustic backstage and some interviews.
(Source: arte.tv)
After so many years and articles where you deviate your words at a time, you also want the opportunity to explain why you made certain choices.
—Alison Mosshart, Rolling Stone France April 2011
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
