“WE JUST TRY TO FOCUS ON MAKING REALLY GOOD MUSIC.”
boiling with raw emotion. As run by two of our best friends, lead singer, she slung herself who built it with their own into the role of roadhouse banhands. There’s not too much shee, prowling the stage in her going on in this small town signature gold boots and spitexcept for this incredible stuting out lines like, I’d call you dio. It’s a really inspiring place a heartbreaker, but I reserve to work.” that for nicer things with the fury of a saloon woman BLOOD (AND OTHER) scorned. She traded vocals PRESSURES with White—and maybe Beyond the changes in pro—ALISON MOSSHART a few punches, as tabloids duction, The Kills also delved alleged, though Mosshart has deeper into this personal vehemently denied the rumored fistfights. approach for the new album. Blood Pressures While Mosshart roamed the globe touring is scattered with themes of paranoia and relawith The Dead Weather and doing things like tional dyspepsia. Take “D.N.A.”, a slow-burnshooting machine guns with White for the ing track penned by Hince, that opens with, “Treat Me Like Your Mother” video, Hince When it came to pass, lonely passed me by/ Fate remained in England at work on the album. with a single blow has custard pied me now, and After two Dead Weather LPs and at the end heats up into an anthem for perseverance with of her latest tour, Mosshart, understandably the refrain, We will not be moved by it. exhausted, set her sights on finishing up the These are the days we’ll never forget, fourth Kills record. Mosshart declares on the final choruses of “After we’d made the record, Alison and I “Pots and Pans,” sounding more earnest than talked about the theme: there’s a lot about gen- she’s ever managed before. After years of ironic der, about relationships,” Hince says. detachment, the band has let out a breath they Blood Pressures, released in April, scrapped maybe didn’t know they were holding, fixating minimalism for lush layers of sound, marking less on the external stylings of life and more on a departure from the artsy pop that No Wow the real emotions that claw at human relationand Midnight Boom had borne and a step back ships. Maybe the coolest band in all of indietoward the band’s earlier rock roots. They dom has finally found its heart. recorded the new album at the Key Club stuThey’ve evolved musically, too. Gone are the dio in the tiny town of Benton Harbor, Mich. playground-chant singalongs; Blood Pressures “We love to go there. We wrote No Wow marks some of the grandest and most sophisthere, and we’ve always been looking to get ticated tracks the band has ever penned, which back every chance we get,” Mosshart says. “It’s Hince says was intentional.
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“It’s been a long time since 2002, when we started being a band,” he says. “When you get to your third or fourth record, evolving the sound just seems like the natural thing to do.” For the inky, clattering “Satellite,” Hince and Mosshart, who describe themselves spiritually as atheists, were joined by a full gospel choir, an event that touched them both deeply. “We were all together in a tiny room, and we drew the blinds and it was really quiet,” Hince says of the recording session. “The room was just full of voices. It was quite the experience for us, because it’s usually just the two of us singing. You don’t expect it to be so transcending, but it was.” Mosshart, who admits she still gets “really nervous” before going onstage, says she adapts her approach to music for both acts. “Working with Jamie definitely makes me go in a certain direction,” Mosshart says. “With Jamie, it’s this conversation between us, this relationship between us onstage that’s being projected to people. The Dead Weather is a four-piece band of people going crazy.” Even though they’re veterans of the music scene, The Kills still face a continuous stream of pressures, from the unusual—their tour bus vanished prior to a gig in Texas in 2008 and, after an FBI search, was later found abandoned by the driver in a Los Angeles parking lot—to harrowing schedules on the road, including an incident where Mosshart fainted onstage from heat stroke during Lollapalooza. Hince has popped up in the tabloids recently for a different kind of notoriety. His love life became the target of international gossip when he started dating Kate Moss back in 2007. Rumors are currently swirling that the couple is engaged or married, but Hince refuses to let the media’s obsession with his personal life trump his artistic career. “There’s my point of view and then everyone else’s point of view, and everyone else’s point of view is the problem,” Hince says. “I just live my life. I love myself. I lock myself away and it doesn’t bother me. I always wanted to live my life under the radar, and a lot has changed. But I just want to focus on music and live my life in the most pleasurable way I can. “It blows us away that people buy our records and come see us,” he continues. “I’ve been making music since I was 18, and just playing music is what I want to do. Everything else is stupid, you know, like being in the papers for your girlfriend.” “We pick our battles to fight, and I think that’s the most important thing,” Mosshart says. “I don’t read reviews of myself. We just try to focus on making really good music.”