The Kills at Emo's
The Kills: Aw, wooks wike somebody's sweepy.
There's this part in the terrible Mark Wahlberg vehicle (redundant?) Rock Star where Wahlberg has a run-in with Jason Flemyng, the guy he's replacing in the film's fictional hair metal band, Steel Dragon. After Flemyng makes the film's Judas Priest inspiration abundantly clear via overt reference to his sexuality, he does a quick monologue (directly into the camera) about how his onstage prowess comes from saying "no" to drugs and being in bed at 11:30 the night before every gig. Just when Wahlberg thinks he's caught a full glance at the man behind the shiny, mascaraed curtain, Flemyng drops one last bomb—his David Coverdale locks are but a wig—and dejectedly walks out of the film.
It's a heavy-handed scene in a stupid movie, but it does as good a job of deconstructing the myth of "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll" as any band from the glory days of punk and post-punk. Of course, not every band of that era jammed econo and kept things "authentic" (read: occasionally boring); plenty of them also bought into the pageantry of the great rock 'n' roll swindle. The Sex Pistols was a massive put-on, The Ramones' legacy is about leather jackets as much as it is about "Blitzkrieg Bop," and the post-Glenn Danzig Misfits all but lost itself in devilocks and Famous Monsters Of Filmland iconography.
UK-based duo The Kills has gone through great pains to not be perceived as a product of that rock factory: Its members initially adopted cryptic stage names, branded their albums with fuzzy cover photos, and established a "rarely, if ever" policy for interacting with the press. But in doing so, they also embraced the same sort of scum-obsessed rebelliousness and stand-offishness that has defined rock star behavior since the first time Lou Reed insulted Lester Bangs. During the course of three records, Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince have transformed into blues-and-Velvet-Underound-loving vampires, but on some nights—like Friday night at Emo's—they reveal themselves to be a couple of nerds playing dress-up in heroin chic Halloween costumes.
Those seams show a little more clearly on Hince. While he's got a set of cool moves and a way with wringing sounds from a guitar (the sort of ominous chords usually reserved for the entrances of sitcom bullies), the male half of The Kills got fairly goofy on the Emo's crowd, especially during the band's droning centerpiece, "Kissy Kissy." After displaying the proper way to stab Mosshart in her kissy, kissy mouth with his instrument, Hince thrust it at the audience as if he was the star of Dr. Tongue's 3-D House Of Guitarists. Later in the song, he sauntered over to stage right, rested against the PA stack, and strummed a few bars with an "I'm too cool for this song" look on his face. (Dude... Judging by the number of times the word "magic" appears in your lyrics, you'll never be too cool for any song.)
Mosshart's performance was a tad more sincere, if not as full of clichés, i.e. the "two hands on the mic stand" lean during "U.R.A. Fever," and the guitar hero spins thrown into "Kissy Kissy." With her bangs shellacked to her face by the sixth song (a spitfire take on 2008's "Last Day Of Magic"), she definitely didn't look like someone who rode home from a show two nights earlier in an ambulance. Nor did she sound like one when singing a rendition of "I Put A Spell On You" that found its way back to Screamin' Jay Hawkins through Glenn Danzig.
It's a shame that the non-musical elements of The Kills distract so much from the musical ones, seeing as that's the whole point of Hince and Mosshart jettisoning their identities for a bunch of unfocused press photos. Brimming with attitude (while remaining enough of a blank slate to soundtrack the Upper East Side antics of Gossip Girl), the band's Midnight Boom was one of the most singular releases of 2008, and the hollow, Roland-and-handclap-assisted riff-a-thons like "U.R.A. Fever" and "Hook And Line" killed at Emo's. (The smoldering "Black Balloon," however, went over like a lead balloon, the crowd's disinterest mirrored by Hince, who opted to play the number seated downstage). Giant sparks flew each time the band members trained their gaze on each other (does Hince's relationship with Kate Moss make it more or less likely that he and Mosshart are fucking?), but stuff like Hince's "Tape Song" boot-scooting is almost as cheesy as Bret Michaels' hair extensions. Maybe if they stopped believing their own bullshit, and stopped pretending like they're on so many drugs, Hince and Mosshart would deliver a show that lives up to the promise of their music. The lesson is right there in that crappy Mark Wahlberg movie: Nobody does a gig like Bobby Beers at half-cock.
