The Kills - Keep On Your Mean Side

Recorded at the same dingy British studio that birthed the White Stripes’ Elephant, The Kills come through with a new-school, garage blues classic that - while nowhere as the catchy as the Stripes - is just as enjoyable a listen. VV and Hotel conjure up a druggy world of dirty, sexy menace. Their interwoven male/female vocals are buoyed by a minimalist, creepy pulse of lo-fi instrumentation, and the resulting 12 songs (9 new ones and 3 off their excellent Black Rooster EP) are nothing short of sublime. Influenced by the Velvet Underground as much as any bluesmen, tracks like “Cat Claw” and “Kissy Kissy” are absolutely electric with tension and grit, while “Fried My Little Brains” propels along on a stomping, back porch rhythm – assuming your back porch is a fire escape in some surreal, Pop Art drug fantasy. While the contrast of feminity and cat-scratched distortion is nothing that special – especially in this “new rock” scene – The Kills are able to bring a unique slant nonetheless. The longing, elegiac “Wait” is perhaps the best evidence of this; an exercise in repetition, the two-chord loop and seductive, PJ Harvey-esque vocals combine for one of the most compelling tracks on an already-solid album. As long as The Kills continue to embrace their strengths, it should be no problem for them to build on Keep On Your Mean Side’s sparse momentum. [www.thekills.tv]