The audacious may boldly attempt to categorize the British-American rock band The Kills as part of the garage rock revival scene. Though “revival” is now a bit contradictoryitself, the holes in this term are not what make this assessment utterly false.
The contradictions of this designation run deep within The Kills (including even the manner in which they became a rock outfit), but nowhere are these inconsistencies more evident than on their newest LP Blood Pressures, released earlier this week.
To serve it up neat, The Kills are posers, and they are so in the best possible way.
The garage rock revival — that pop music in the western world absorbed in the earliest part of this millennium — was a throwback to the raw, stripped-down sound that became a cult counterpoint in the late 1960s.
What The Strokes and The White Stripes produced from their figurative garages in New York City and Detroit, respectively, accurately reflected the subtleties of this conjunction in rock history. The rampant technology available was avoided, and the content created played the result of a required re-simplification.
That which can be heard on the excellent record that is Blood Pressures is not stripped down. Nothing is simplified. What you will hear is not minimalism, but an extremely careful and calculated imitation.
“Future Starts Slow” is not only the perfect starting point for an album of this intense caliber, but may be the best song of 2011 thus far.
The sickly and ravishing harmonies on “Satellite” narrowly avoid transforming into a full-blown, quietus waltz.
A trashy acoustic guitar and garbage-can percussion in the final track act as The Kills’ final caricature of garage-dom.
The pairing of American punk-singer Alison Mosshart and multi-lateral British
guitarist Jamie Hince created a tasty recipe, not for innovation, but for attentiveness and appreciation. Rather than actually showcasing the bare bones of this rescued sub-genre, Mosshart and Hince executed a discretion rarely seen in the produce-content-constantly generation.
With four heedful ears, these two picked up every one of the blissful traits unique to this music (wretchedly intense distortion, beautifully dreary minor harmonies, dominating reverb) and not only implemented them all, but did so while maintaining a façade of auditory passiveness.
–Andy Collier is a senior studying audio production. If you think The Kills might just be better than The Killers, email him at ac165406@ohiou.edu.
@ThePostCulture
