Tuesday 05/05/09 The Kills, The Horrors @ The Paradise, Boston MA

The Kills started life filled with some gritty ideas on how to play the rock game as a duo, and more than a passing debt to early Polly Jean Harvey.  Perhaps it was due to Alison Mosshart's direct, withering vocals, or the raw guitar combo of her and partner Jamie Hince's slashing riffs but the whiff of 'Dry' was all over the place.  Making things more economical (or perhaps ensuring that no other dilution of their musical direction could occur due to conflicting opinions) was the decision to have a traditional rhythm section provided by a box.  No fuzzboxes here, they've got a beatbox and they're gonna use it.  Skip forward a few years and there's a whole new beat; it's not like the debut material from 'Keep On Your Mean Side' was harsh programming such as the kind Albini spit out using his Roland, but the new material on 'Midnight Boom' is more much of a foot pounding the floor/hands clapping in the air celebration, and the room was filled with young females clearly looking to identify with Alison as a confident rock and roller, playing and singing with Jagger-like swagger.  This sort of star quality was likely a factor in her recent recruitment into Dead Weather, Jack White's latest post-White Stripes project.  Alison's a magnetic personality, no question.

From the opening "U.R.A. Fever," Mosshart's like a shark, constantly moving and circling the full environs of the near empty stage (it's amazing how much space one can save without a backline).  "Cheap and Cheerful' sounds like a completely different band, as if Peaches tweaked their beats but left out blue streak dialog.  Hince's jabbing, stuttering guitar lines twined around the urgent top string riffing that Alison provided when she would shoulder her Hofner, and he played about half the set by himself, leaving Alison to roam the stage w/ mic in hand, her long legs covering a lot of ground during her strides.  Had someone lodged a GPS unit in the back pocket of her jeans, a post-show review of the data would yield a few kilometers traveled.  New EP lead-off track "Black Balloon" was a needed counterpoint to the upbeat, kinetic material, a slow burner which just left cinders when the flame ebbed and the heat dissipated.  The band has successfully staked out a territory in the swampy sex-dripping landscape, so it was hardly a surprise that they chose songs from Screaming Jay Hawkins ("I Put A Spell On You") and Captain Beefheart ("Dropout Boogie") to close down the evening.  PJ Harvey's a notable disciple of Van Vliet's, so the thread of continuity is still there.

The Horrors returned to Boston tonight following a semi-infamous gig last year at Great Scott, when singer Faris Badwin earned the band a permanent ban from the venue after smashing the club's plaster bust of Elvis. Looking like the plan of a mad scientist's attempt to morph Joey Ramone and Marilyn Manson, the extremely lanky Badwin was on proper behaviour tonight, only abusing his mic stand and occasionally lunging onto the stage monitors at front. The band has changed sounds significantly (and impressively) on their just-released sophomore effort 'Primary Colours' and features a more batcave/early post-punk sound, with guitarist Joshua Third convincingly conjuring the sort of sonics that suggest Bunnymen/Bauhaus/Mary Chain imprinting as a youth. Fruity dance moves and tassled loafers was paired with the repetitive bass mantras of Tomethy Furse, while Spider Webb manned a vintage electronic bank of dials, meters and knobs which looked like it may have assisted the Sputnik launch. A very promising live prospect, but not quite the real deal yet. 

The show in photos: