Midnight Boom

The KillsMidnight BoomI’ve wanted to like The Kills ever since seeing their first album cover. Alison Mosshart, the female half of the London-based duo, sings like a young PJ Harvey and looks like a supermodel who spends her free timetouring with The Strokes. She moves and howls like a rock n’ roll star, no irony in sight, just a raw, sexy presence. The male half, Jamie Hince, composes songs with an art heart bent on edge and looks like looks like he could’ve been a great flyweight boxer in the 1920s. He also looks and sounds like he could be Lou Reed’s younger, much less privileged brother. The Kills look great on stage and paper and now, after a couple of only decent albums, they sound great about half the time.

Midnight Boom, the band’s third studio album and first since 2005’s stellar No Wow, is another foot-stomp-inducing garage-meets-indie-rock album bent on being forwardly arty. Mosshart, whose vocals seem to be forever dripping with both sexual innuendo and a dive-bar bite, is still The Kills’ voice box despite lacking the Karen O-like idea-a-second ability needed to keep up with Midnight’s diverse arrangements, which - not surprisingly - sound like a partied-up version of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Mosshart never quite strips her throat raw like her hero Harvey used to, either, but Mosshart does flip from time to time - and damn if she doesn’t look like the real thing.

The lyrics here, though not bad, don’t really matter; Mosshart knows that it’s all been sung, and thus relies mostly on clever phrasings, memorable hooks and easily digestible poetics. The focuses on Midnight, as with all The Kills’ records, are Mosshart’s vocals and, mostly, Hince’s edgy accompaniments. The music on Midnight is immediately more processed and quirky (read: fun) than The Kills’ past work. Still strung out on minimalist arrangements that sound - thanks to Hince’s wandering mind approach to noise- and flourish-making - like a well composed collection of simple, effective ideas. The Kills’ art-or-die stance sounds as cute and comforting as ever, almost as if no one has told them that it’s all been done. It’s refreshing, really, to hear a band attempt to spin their modest means and subtle compositions into something wholly original. And how often do you see a real-deal gutter band playing dance-y indie rock?

And, at least sometimes, the party-meets-arty schtick works for Mosshart and Hince, at moments even sounding like the rare stadium-ready hipster album, mostly due to the band’s sturdy (but never commercial) penchant for oddly mechanical production. Standout tracks like “Tape Song,” “Last Days of Magic” and “U.R.A. Fever” come off like poppy punk songs dressed up in sharp, pounding beats, razor-sharp guitar squeals and junky production, all also fitting into the idea-a-second category. “Cheap and Cheerful” and “M.E.X.I.C.O.,” two of Midnight’s most accessible tracks, suffer the same fault most of the band’s previous work has in that they have beautiful, creative moments but, as a whole, just don’t seem to work. The dance-y songs are fun and, if you’re in the right mood, a very interesting, enlivening take on the suddenly popular indie-dance-rock genre. Mostly, though, the party tunes just distract from the album’s five or six truly great songs; Mosshart, possibly trying to have it both ways, even seems to sing as if she’s a different person on the album’s two song styles, making for a somewhat disjointed listening experience on an already over-stimulating album.

Closer “Goodnight Bad Morning” is as slow and introspective as The Kills get; Mosshart’s vocals shift from confrontational and lively to something resembling a Stories-era Harvey over a piano-driven composition that features countless flourishes - most of which are just weird, sporadic guitar noises. It’s a nice comedown on an album that is always engaging and at times exhausting and stuffed with maybe a few too many ideas. The Kills haven’t quite arrived with Midnight Boom, but this identity crisis of a record does feature many of their best moments yet, including “Last Days of Magic,” the best speaker-blower 2008 has thus far produced.   7/10

Written by G. William Locke