Dorks And Losers

Of all places in the coun­try, indie rock duo The Kills picked Ben­ton Har­bour, Michi­gan to record their third album, Mid­night Boom. The coastal city off Lake Michi­gan obvi­ously had a pos­i­tive effect on Jamie Hince and Ali­son “VV” Mosshart because their late night record­ing ses­sions helped inspire the lat­est LP’s title.

In con­trast to the band’s pre­vi­ous efforts, Keep On Your Mean Side (2002) and No Wow (2005) that uti­lized more instru­men­ta­tion, Mid­night Boom is more bare, empha­siz­ing beats to achieve their garage rock sounds. They sur­pris­ingly bal­ance a healthy indus­trial sound through­out the LP in addi­tion to pro­vid­ing catchy melodies and sing-aloud lyrics.

The album opens with “U.R.A. Fever,” which could be mis­taken for a Nine Inch Nails track, but sub­se­quently tran­si­tions to the fem­i­nine punk rock track “Cheap And Cheer­ful.” Mosshart joins a short list of rock chicks with atti­tude, chan­nel­ing the likes of Shirley Man­son (“Tape Song”) and PJ Har­vey (“Hook And Line”).

The Lon­don duo masks some often dark and cryp­tic lyrics with some sim­ple, yet addict­ing rhythms. You can hear the des­per­a­tion in “Last Day Of Magic” (lyrics: “What if you move? What if you hide? / There’s only so much you can miss / Before we both col­lide”), but can’t help lose your­self in the cho­rus “My lit­tle tor­nado / My lit­tle hur­ri­cano.” It also doesn’t help that the band unleashes the pleas­ant sound­ing bal­lad “Black Bal­loon,” a seem­ingly dis­heart­en­ing con­trast to Albert Lamorisse’s enchant­ing 1957 short film The Red Bal­loon (Le Bal­lon Rouge), near the album’s half-way mark as a way to test if the lis­ten­ers are really listening.

The Kills are an inter­est­ing band because of how com­fort­able you think their music can make you. That sounds weird, I know, espe­cially when lis­ten­ing to the blunt and free­wheel­ing track “M.E.X.I.C.O.” but the band has so much poten­tial to be gen­tle, as on “Good­night Bad Morn­ing,” that it’s hard to not want to fol­low their musi­cal direction.

In a recent Rolling Stone inter­view (March 20, 2008), Mosshart described The Kills as “that spirit, that rebel­lious­ness” of rock and roll. Mid­night Boom is indica­tive of that assess­ment: blow your mind for 30 min­utes, rest, then hit repeat.

[photo via Nat Miller]

[photo via Cylob]
____

Track list:

1. U.R.A. Fever
2. Cheap And Cheer­ful
3. Tape Song
4. Get­ting Down
5. Last Day Of Magic
6. Hook And Line
7. Black Bal­loon
8. M.E.X.I.C.O.
9. Sour Cherry
10. Alpha­bet Pony
11. What New York Used To Be
12. Good­night Bad Morning

Pop­u­lar­ity: 11% [?]