THE KILLS

The Kills consist of VV and Hotel. These two have been making music for the past year and doing a lot of home recordings where they live in the UK as well. They have a serious knack for doing great raw recordings, narcotic and saccharine - the drums alone will pull you in. Strong female presence much like Chrissie Hynde of Pretenders with fierce singing and wild taunts similar to Patti Smith. The male vocals charm those that know the sounds of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground. Well honed and with delivery that will knock you on the floor, their controlled saturation really come out on the foreground. The Kills blow me away. So here is the culmination of two great artists, two of the hardest working people you'll meet, producing songs that are simply timeless.
Steve Aoki

V V & Hotel
When we met, we made a bet, we made a deal. It was like shakin' hands at the hospital. Two hostile cowboys gambling in white paper dresses, trading pistols for cigarettes, coming to terms with the great fortune of anxiety. Hot as hell you know, never satisfied, never careful. Just thought, first thing's first, "take the brakes out of the car." Now lets play music.

No rules, just nothing medium. Everyone's got that place in their brain that can't be even-tempered. That sick inch. Or the mile. Revolutionary artists live there, drive it like the hunted, drive it for the crash. Beauty reversed, the head: a cursed rebel shack, once entertained, never escapable. Grace that land and grace vanishes. You're left with the real thing, the incurable thing… An' that thing makes a noise.

All else? What! What else is there? When words like dangerous, different, radical or even eventful, are so shamelessly pinned on every undeserving bag of shit and sugar. People these days are living too long. A million shrines of poor design. Ointments and care, Jesus, full colour, channel 1-7 million, preserved in a Zoo. Oh how can one say "No" without ever-present burdening regret?

Just like this.

+

Hotel and I had been sending tapes and ideas back and forth between London and the US for 6 months but I got sick, we couldn't stand it at that speed. So naturally we figured, one of us is going to have to move. It took me about an hour and 45 minutes to get to the airport, 15 to check my bags, 10 for coffee, cigarette... an' we got rolling.

There was an obsessive desire between us to turn the tables and completely instate a whole new thing. We wanted a new underground. Yeah, we want it. You know, pick and eat and run like the devil. That's the idea. Let's do everything we want, fuck the consequences.

Music all the time and documenting everything, film, video, ink, audio, in massive detail, history from birth. Making ourselves the art we're starving to see... you know, no patience. Our own lawless leftfield Bonnie & Clyde.

We've both done music since we were young, but there's something irresistible about screwing off and starting from scratch, shoving an x thru your old things. Kiss the new, the naive. Secrecy. Light as feather, brave as a tiger, that sort of thing. There's a feeling of indestructibility whirling in the air now, getting caught in our hair and teeth and we never sleep anymore. +We got a bird in our hand.

DM Releases:
DM036: "Black Rooster"; BUY 12"/CDEP

Discography
Black Rooster 12"/ CDep on Dim Mak (USA) & Domino (Europe)
"Restaurant Blouse" on 5RC (Kill Rock Stars) "IF THE 21ST CENTURY DID NOT EXIST, IT WOULD BE NECESSARY TO INVENT IT" compilation.

Press

Updated 07/15/04
Skyscraper #15
words Nolan Gawron photos Gary Smith, Erik Keldsen, Jason Carlisle


...If Bonnie and Clyde had traded in their guns for guitars, The Kills is what they would have sounded like. Decadent and inseparable, Floridian femme fatale VV (Allison Mosshart, previously of Discount) and her trans-Atlantic partner-in-crime, Hotel (Jamie Hince, previously of Scarfo), are taking over the world with their own brand of intimate and sonically seductive boot-stomping blues rawk...

Updated 01/06/04
New Musical Express
by Mark BEAUMONT



In the future there will be no bassists. Job Centres will swarm with gormless greasemonkeys claiming they're only professional skill is "slap funk". The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and now The Kills: hey dude , you wanna rock the howling-Velvet-blues dollar, sack the twat with the four-string.
The Kills- one Florida scruffbag singer called VV who's perfected Patti Smith's trainee bag lady look, one London guitarist called (ahem) Hotel who appears to have been thrown out of Mercury Rev for doing such a bad impression of Jonathan Donahue's haircut and one drum machine that has no idea how fucking cool it is- are the nu-garage Elastica who wear their classic clutter-punk clichés proudly on their trademarked forearms. "I've got a monkey on my back!" VV squeals despite clearly having no such thing. There is a divine, cranky CBGBs death-rattle racket that sounds like the blues taking bad crack on a show, broken train to nowhere. Or "the Picadelly line", as it’s better known.


Updated 01/06/04
O.C. WEEKLY BY Jeremy Sherer

England's boy/girl duo, the Kills, slinks along the stage, belting out tales of alchohol, fighting and death set to a soundtrack comprised of early Velvet Underground, John Cale and Royal Trux. The group has a rep, which makes Hotel, the boy in the combo, irritable. He prefers you just pick up their debut album, Keep on Your Mean Side.

"There is something important about going to a record shop," he said. "You can just feel your heart racing to put (on a new album), and you can just smell the vinyl when you open it."

The Kills have only officially been a band for 16 months, but that hasn’t kept the press from slobbering all over them like a wasted prom date. "It's kind of the ultimate paradox," said Hotel. "As we go along, we get more and more attention while we want to create and grow. We really want to leave a mark, and the more popular we get, the harder that is. In England, we turn interviews down now. We don't want to be a part of someone else's scene."


Updated 11/25/03
Killing Me Softly
VENUS

Alison Mosshart is a lawless creature. With a face like Boss Hog's Cristina Martinez, she struts with the grit of Chrissie Hynde and scowls with a PJ Harvey appeal while fronting London-based punk duo the Kills. Her bandmate Hotel (nee Jamie Hince) calls her W.

The Kills have a matchless swagger. Think 60s rocknroll - Rolling Stones style mixed with wicked blues. W is a nasty as she wants to be. This former Floridian likes the doldrums of London, and since 2000, the Kills have sorted out what it means to be a rocknroll band. The Black Rooster EP, released on Dim Mak last year, was a great look into the taunting darkness of the Kills. The British press immediately trounced on the group, and the Kills' European tour with Primal Scream was a wild success, but W remains unfazed.

MacKenzie Wilson had the pleasure of conversing with the ever-so-charming W. She learned that Jean Stein's biography on Andy Warhol protegee Edie Sedgwick, Edie: An Amercian girl, is W's bible and that W and Hotel are control freaks that hunger for perfection.

The band's studio full-length, Keep On Your Mean Side, slated for released on Rough Trade in April, is a stunning raw moment.

How are you?
I'm OK. We've been busy doing artwork for the record since the end of the Primal Scream tour. We took a Christmas break, but it was fake as far as I can tell because we worked on Kills things the whole time. I was in Detroit, too. I spent two weeks in a 24hour photocopy shop.

Would you mind telling me about your childhood?
I grew up in Florida, but I hate nature, sun, and heat so much. It gave me anxiety. I always played music. I wrote a lot and hung out with my brother. By the time I was 14, I was playing gigs and I was on the road. I actually wasn't in Florida very much until right before I moved to London in early 2000.

When did music become a part of your life? Did you ever imagine it leading to a professional career?
Music never became anything. It's all I've ever cared about. I never cared about having a professional career. I don't. I wouldn't say I have any sort of professional career.

What inspired you to follow music?
Bands inspired me. Old gear. The aesthetics of music- the stuff, the weight of he stuff, and the look of it. It's gorgeous. The lifestyle and the people playing music. Oh, it's a whole large spectrum of things: attitude, obsession, clubs that look like fallout shelters, and being on the road all the time. Snapshots and films. Songs and sounds with imperfections that you fall in love with and can't recreate. It's the weird energy that you can hear when certain times and all the questions an all the things you imagine when you hear a record.

How did you and Hotel meet? What sorts of things did you have in common?
I met Hotel while I was in London playing in a different band, maybe four years ago. Oddly enough, one of the first conversations we ever had was about the Edie book. I walked into his room and saw it sitting there. I was so happy because I didn't know anyone who'd read it or would have cared to, and we'd both read it six times. We had the same record collection. We had the same ieas about ditching our previous lives and sarting new ones. Were both obsessed, high-strung irritable perfectionists. We got along.

How did you manage to make music together?
We tried writing music together via mail. We sent reels of racks back and forth across the ocean for about six months, but it was agonizing. The speed of working like that was tiring. We were losing our minds about it, so I moved.

Did you find the move to from Florida to London to be a difficult transition? Was the thought of moving always in the back of your mind?
I hated where I was; it wasn't good for me. I was writing so much that it started to be unhealthy. I didn't go out. I didn't talk. I just sent the tapes. I didn't sleep and I didn't take care of myself. Eventually, I got sick, I was so out of it. I was in the clinic getting refueled. The weekends got longer, but I was saving cash. When I finally had enough, I left.
It took me a while to pull myself together when I arrived in London, but it was the best thing. When Hotel and I started working together, it was the best thing. I'd had so much confidence it would be like that.

I've read that you and Hotel made a bet, made a deal. What kind of deal?
When we met, it was like we were able to see through the smoke for the first time about doing music and art with other people. We'd both done bands for forever and you encounter so many horrific things within partnerships on projects ? some real soul-destroying attitudes and feelings that you cant excel or experiment or be open. We knew there'd be none of that between us. And aside from that, it was just like this thing in my bones: We'd complement each other in all the right ways. Like a voodoo lock ? do this or die.

What was it like to record Keep On Your Mean Side?
We recorded for about two weeks. We had just flown home from New York from a tour in the States. We literally got off the plane, loaded the gear into the car, and drove to the studio. We'd record from about 11 a.m. until 9 a.m., go home and write a song, stay up working on it until 5 p.m., and then sleep three hours. It was a mad race for time, but it was cool.

You sound so hungry and eager.
We were so excited and so awake, and it lasted. We recorded at Toe Rag Studios with Liam Watson onto a 1-inch 8 ?track. All his gear is from the 1960s and sounds fantastic and looks fantastic, so we were running around recording and trying to film it at the same time, but there are only two of us. Hotel played nearly all the instruments. The films are funny because one minute he's playing guitars and then he's behind the drum set still with his guitar on and he?s got a harmonica in his mouth.

Did being in London have any effect?
Myra Hindley died in prison during that session, so there were all these newspapers lying around with her big eyes looking up. We were freezing, too. It was so cold because Liam had no heating. I was always shaking violently, plus we were drinking 30 cups of coffee a day to stay warm.
[Myra Hindley was Moors murderer who was jailed for life in 1966 for killing two children with her lover Ian Brady. Hindley passed away November 12, 2002, from a serious chest infection following a suspected heart attack two weeks before.]

You've been at this music thing for a couple of years. You know what it's like to be a female in this male-dominated industry. There are bands like Sleater-Kinney, Le Tigre, Sahara Hotnights, and Ladytron that are doing things their way. Do you think women still have to put up a fight to get their music heard, or are things improving?
I think amazing musicians are still putting up a fight to get their music heard. The music industry is hysterical. The press covers the same things. The popular writing style in music press is embarrassing. It's a joke. The photographs are boring. Nothing jumps out. What's popularized has no edge, no heart, no message, no enchanting atmosphere around it, no mystery, you know.

The mystery is definitely gone; however, the Kills seem to be doing something about it.
I grew up listening to music that was rough. You could hear someone's fucked- up breathing; you could listen all the way into the inside of their bodies. There was danger about it ? it made you nervous and involved. I can't believe this sort of thing is gone, and it isn't covered. Men and women's fucked-up breathing doesn't make the front cover of anything. The classifieds are more fascinating than the features. That could change. I guess you have to think like that.




Updated 11/25/03
Slaying'em with blues rock
The Kills on MNF

Jamie Hince, one-time frontman of doomed indie rockers Scarfo and sole member of shortlived studio project Fiji, has been reborn. His name is now, rather disconcertingly, "hotel", and he's one-half of The Kills - the sharpest, rawest, sexiest blues-rock duo to hit town since The White Stripes. His partner in crime is one Alison Mosshart, who, at the age of 24, already has ten-year musical career behind her with the Florida-based Discount. Her name is now "VV".

"we wanted this band to be Year Zero for both of us," Hotel explains. "So we renamed each other. I'm Hotel because she likes hotels, and she's VV because of some stupid nickname. We call ourselves The Kills because it sounds like a band that would be cool in any decade."

When the pair met at a party in London a year ago, they made a pact to write songs together via long-distance correspondence. It didn't work. Frustrated, VV traded Florida sun for London rain in January, and found that her leap of faith paid off.

"We worked really well together immediately," Jamie nods. "it was what each of us were missing from our lives. I can't describe where our sound comes from, it's just something that happens when the two of us play together."

The stark simplicity of their method - two voices, guitar, drum machine - is in keeping with their determined independence. They've recently completed a two - month tour of America (including a pit stop in Virginina to record tracks with royal Trux's Neil Hagerty), which VV booked herself and financed with her own credit card.

"It was so liberating," VV sighs. "We could just leave the venues we played and drive down the freeway, talking until sunrise about everything that happened."

Hotel nods. "We don't want to be in a scene. We want to be our won scene. It's time to stop joining in with everyone else and just fucking do your own thing."

By the end of the tour, The Kills' arresting live shows (not harmed by VV's lanky frame and model-cut cheekbones) had earned them gushing press and they began to be pushed up to headline slots. Not bad, considering they only started out in March with a demo dropped off at London's rough Trade shop, so they could "get some gigs" (it later evolved into the "Black Rooster" EP on Domino). Now, rumours abound that they're talking big money with major labels - although they're not giving anything away.

"People should find out for themselves what we're doing next," Hotel demurs. "No-one's gonna know our plan. It's the only way to stay on top of things."


Updated 11/20/03

SKYSCRAPER #14

Keep On Your Mean Side CD by Michael Meade.

The Kills are Hotel (a.k.a. Briton Jamie Hince) and V.V. (a.k.a. Floridian ex-patriot Alison Mosshart), the most recent of the spate of boy-girl duos. Employing a somewhat minimal, raw garage blues template lifted from Jack and Meg White and Royal Trux, The Kills offer their debut recording, Keep On Your Mean Side. Although immediate comparisons to the White Stripes, and others in that vein, will be unavoidable, it's also not altogether accurate. There's more to the Kills' story, and their sound. VV has obviously done a fair amount of listening to Patti Smith and PJ Harvey ; she conjures their expressive voices and give-a-shit attitude. The corrugated adginess of the Velvets percolates through the songs on this disc. (The Kills readily confess their admiration for the Velvet Underground). There are experimental sonic elements, as well, although they don't make melodramatic incursion. True, the riffs on Keep On Your Mean Side could not be strictly classified as de novo, but what riffs : powerfull, strongly stated, gut hitting. Opening song "Supperstition" charges a repetitive guitar phrase with VV's best Patti Smith lilting growl, as some menacing feedback squelch is thrown around. "Kissy Kissy" is a somewhat down-tempo vocal duet. "Pull A U" and "Fried My Little Brains" both sound like Top Forty songs to me, although in the best way. The Latter brings to mind Sixties Stones ant the first two Zeppelin albums. "Fuck The People" is a steamroller of a blues boogie, and is the closest as any song here to both an anthem and a mission statement for The Kills. Not the sort of song I would typically habe much interest in, nevertheless I find it queerly compelling. It's followed imediately by the on-the-nod narcotic stupor of "Monkey 23," which recalls the haziness of Mazzy star, or more suitably Drugstore. "Gipsy Death and you" winds things up with an acoustic levity. This disc might be faulted for relying a little too heavily on the tradition from which it draws, but that's a minor complaint . And isn't the whole point, really, to embrave the past and move it along, however slightly ?


Updated 11/17/03

SKYSCRAPER #13

Black Rooster CDEP

The kills consist of a couple of named V.V. was once know as Allison, who's from England, and V.V. was once know as Alison, who's from Florida and used to be in the pop-punk band discount. I say this not to be discredit the Kills, but to lay all the cards on the table. When all can't be Bowie or Queen and pull off schizophenic outbursts of genre hopping that they were be abble to, but when a persona is created to fit a musical style, it gives you the feeling they're trying to hide from the past. Anyway, there's your reference, let's move on. The kills play a deconstructed hybrid of blues anr rock, not too far from the White Stripes Dej Still or Royal Trux. Hotel's rhytmic guitar style mixed with V.V.'s strong and sensual vocals make for one smooth cocktail-it's simplistic, but undeniably classic songwriting. Try to deny the raw guitar punch of "cat claw" or the melancholy wooziness of "wait". The songs are long and repetitious, which makes me wonder if they're short on their tricks, through what they lack in musical dynamics they make up for in their security ? There are no empty promises here folks. Expect great things from this band. Allison is dead ; long live The Kills.


Updated 11/3/03

THE JOURNAL Interview by Mickel Nevin

You just toured with Primal Scream, what was that like ?
VV-That was amazing. They are so into music, it's unreal. They carry boom boxes with them everywhere, each one of them, and play music nonstop.

You're livieng in the UK now. Do you see any of the same overblown patriotism in England that we've been seeing here in the US ?
VV-It's not as scary there; there's not as muchsupport. I'm freaked out being here. There are so many hillbillies, and assholes, and banners and flags everywhere. I was as this trucks stop this morning and I nearly started crying. Everyone I saw had an American flag pin stuck to the shirt. So many poeple love this war in Irak.

Have you been noticing differences in the way that the war is being presented by the media here, and the way that it's being presented abroad ?
VV-The news in the US is so completely different than the news in Europe. The news that you would get off CNN or the BBC is nothing like the news you would get off a French television station, or a German one, or a Dutch one. This whole war is like a movie for America, it's so overdone. Imean, check out the way that the headlines are presented, or the colors that they use. Everyone is like, "it's so interesting."

What are the differences between living in Europe, and living in America ?
VV-Living in London is very different of living in the rest of the Europe. I would say to everywhere is becoming more and more Americanized though. We were just in Japan. I har been there five years ago. In that amount of time so much had changed and become Westernized. People are getting lazy. People are overweight everywhere. I mean, people are eating shit, and getting fat everywhere, and they don't care. When I go to a super market I get sick seeing what people are filling their shopping carts with. London isn't as bad as America, but it probably will be.

Do you consider yourself a political activist ?
VV-I have really strong views...at this point I'm just going to watch the country crumble. People think that by marching between the lines peacefully, marching within the boundaries that the police have made for them, that something will be accomplished, but it's not going to do anything. People aren't enough here.


Updated 11/3/03

CITY BEAT by Steve Appleford

The road will do things to you. Consider the man and woman know as the kills. Just a year ago, they were a pair of happily desperate travelers, an indie-rock duo in an old Saturn sedan, hitting both coasts and 31 states in between with songs of darkness and lust. A couple of unknowns in search of everything and nothing, like a post-punk Kerouac and Cassidy, Guthrie and Seeger, or Bonnie & Clyde.
So watch now as they stumble slowly away from their van, 90 minutes late to their ouwn sound check at the Troubadour, looking equally beaten and content as they shuffle toward an empty stage. The kills are headliners tonight, dark stars in frayed denim and leather, cigarettes burning between their fingers, their gear a disheveled collection of amps and guitars. Much like the Kills themselves.
"The police start chasing you, but you just drive faster," they will sing later. "It's easier to run than to explain".
The man called Hotel and the woman named V.V. don't speak or even smile until coffee arrives. And Hotel (a.k.a. Jamie Hince) doesn't bother to unzip his leather jacket in the afternoon heat before picking up an electric hollow-bodied guitar of deep, dep red, strumming a low, slow blues riff. V.V. (a.k.a. Allison Mosshart) stands beside her amp, back against the bar, strumming a Velvet Undergroud-ish pattern on her own guitar. She soon step to the microphne to sing something about "black magic and your two-dollar love," from a gringing anti-ballad called "Pull a U." It's raw, loud - just Hotels guitar now - as V.V. howls to the near-empty room/ Daylight still pours in from the rear door, but it's already midnight on stage.
Which is how the Kills like it, just as it was back in Hotel's London basement, where the two began making music together. Or upstairs listening to records, the Brit and this young Florida expat, trading secret revelations no Lou Reed and Hubert Selby Jr.-sages of the underground-but also the deep blues of Rbert Johnson and Charley Patton. They found something sinister and inspiring there, and within the postpunk hoodoo of PJ Harvey.
"I mean, he completely filled my mind with so much excitement", says V.V. now, smoking menthols and sitting at a West Hollywood coffeehouse.
She speaks softly, a dramatic contrast to the sharp, intense wail of her onstage presence when she's spitting out love-hate anthems like "Kissy Kissy." Sitting beside her, Hotel, the chatty street raconter, is talking again about transforming his ecstatic grim dreams of the American underground into reality with the Kills. This is just a short break before showtime, and both of them smoke heavily, stopping only for sips from a silky chocolate drink.
Bothhad been in bands, musical units mostly ignored and long-forgotten (Discount, Scarfo, etc...). But they were drawn to something different this time around, experimenting not just with rock, but dabbling in photography and raw filmmaking, painting and drawing, creating their own kind of mini-Factory in the Warhol mold.
"We're writing stuff in my befroom, and it was like a junk shop of broken equipment," say Hotel. "We'd have to make microphone and fix things, and we were playing on amps that didn't work properly, and really cheap guitars that were busted all the time. And we were spending 24 hours a day doing it. It was never going to be a super-computerized-type project. And when you do that, you always depend on ideas above ability. And that's something we found really inspiring, you know ?"
The Kills are still like that, just two poeple with crap guitars, amplifiers, and a drum machine, plus a stream of engaging, disturbing ideas. They're still taking photos, shooting film footage on tour, V.V. doesn't have to book the club shows herself, not since the release of Keep on your Mean Side, an album that blends the ancient blues with modern boho urgency, finding fans and critics drawn ti their bedroom recordings, embracing their dark side.
Things are little easier now. There are hotel rooms waiting for them in every town. Poeple want to meet them, interview them, photograph them. But the inspirations linger from that first American tout of a summer ago. "The whole thing was so cinematic," says Hotel. "We found ourselves in these really strange situations all the time. And at the same time we were going along at a hundred miles an hour, and everything in the car remained the same. We were just talking about the scene, and what we wanted, and the whole enrironment was whizzing past us and changing constantly."
Not unlike their time back in England. Hotel and V.V. had met earlier, had traded ideas and tapes long-distance, but then, suddenly, V.V. just showed up in England, ready to collaborate in a real way. She found her own place right across the street, dropping off cassettes of ideas through Hostel's mail slot at odd hours. The source material was usualy rooted in the undergroud, not as a pose but as a natural way of expression. Much like Lou Reed himself, who now insists his choice of expression and material was never about being willfully dark but about reflecting the real life around him.
"You have to find some sort of beauty in its ugliness, and some sort of solace in the fact that it's just trumbling down around us," explains Hotel. Those are kinds of things I get drawn to. Like a mixture of beauty and viciousness. I think it's a really great time for literature and music. Because there's so much incredible igliness about this place right now. It's just like really worth documenting and interpreting it. We're certainly past changing it.
"You just see from the war, the politics of protest," he continues. "There's absolutely no power at all."
Things will inevitably change for the band, at least as ling as poeple are paying attention. The basement was nice. It was inspiring, fulfilling, an escape that made the Kills possible, but he's not going back. "I have this over-romantic feeling about being in our basement-where we had no money, no food, no manager, no care for anything other", he says. "We weren't even thinking about releasing a record. And there's something really magic about that."
Onstage that night, the urgency remains. This time, V.V. is the brooding punk chanteuse, a worthy successor to PJ Harvey herself. She dances and shakes and twiches to the crackle and static of Hotel's churning guitar riffs, glaring through the bangs over her face, the curl of smoke from her menthol cigarette catching the light, like a Blue Note album cover.
They sing at one another, a brutal conversation and confession, a song called "Fuck The Poeple", as V.V. give a pair of middle fingers to the crowd. Hotel comes up behind her, learning against her back, singing over her shoulder. It's not a romantic moment, just desperate-just a need to connect.

Updated 11/3/03
BLACK ROOSTER EP REVIEWS

THE KILLS: A documentary
This is an anti-interview?..
By Alexander Laurence
What are the facts?

The Kills are vocalist/guitarist VV, a.k.a. Alison Mosshart, formerly of the punk band Discount, and guitarist/vocalist Hotel, a.k.a. Jamie Hince. She?s from Gainesville, Florida and he?s from London. With Gainesville, think of the Larry Clark film ?Bully.?

When Discount ended in 2000, VV began exchanging tapes with Hotel through the mail, but it took too much time, so VV saved some money and crossed the Atlantic so the duo could write. They couldn?t wait. Early in 2001, they issued a demo that showcased their gritty, sexy sound and earned favorable reviews from magazines. They also contributed a song, "Restaurant Blouse," to the compilation If the Twenty-First Century Did Not Exist, It Would Be Necessary to Invent It. Before the Black Rooster EP came out, they were an unknown quantity,

Their first gigs were at the London and Glasgow LadyFests and supporting Le Tigre. More importantly, The Kills also toured the U.S. for eight weeks before returning to London to finish their first full-length album, Keep on Your Mean Side, which was released by Rough Trade in spring 2003.

This music is what I call ?inquisitive? music. It is a look in a mirror and maybe that look is too long. But it is necessary. Sometimes the focal center of any study of phenomena must be ?inquisitive.? This is so because as Heidegger says, ?It is essential: because it is prompted by an original ontic ignorance which does match the scope of an ambitious project that outstrips all realistic possibilities?.? The wealth is there. People ignore the richness in the concentration of trying to say something new.

Rebellion is often packaged in nice boxes. Once we see that rebellious spirit it must be dragged out year after year, to remind us of what took place. We must see the body of Che Guevara to prove that the revolutionary spirit was real and finite. Maybe the dead corpse of Guevara was just one body in a series of Che Guevaras. What about those young people who weren?t there to see the strut of Guevara, the coolness of James Dean, or the geist of Iggy Pop? Do we have to perform rituals and revivals every time we need a mind properly fucked?

At one point punk rock was a contraction for the sins of our fathers. The question was asked about how much could you put on a Belgian waffle? Less was more. Why not two members instead of four or five? A band like Suicide looked odd in those days. Now every band is like Suicide: just the essentials. Wealth from poverty. More has been done. Less than the least is still new.

Greg Ginn from Black Flag once wrongly called Adam and The Ants fascistic because they dictated fashion and music. He wanted the freedom that comes from the blank slate of punk. Ginn wanted no rules and no judgments. He wanted big slabs of noise to find his own reflection in. But in reality, Black Flag and Fugazi lead to more fascism than Antmusic ever did. Adam Ant was a temporary style revolution that lasted a season. His shtick went immediately to MTV for the consumption of mall goers. While hardcore punk lead to strict rules and behavior as how to conduct oneself. It became an invested lifestyle. Its gallery of heroes was more dull and faceless than the generation it replaced.

VV and Hotel knew the punk world well. Their previous bands Discount and Scarfo fizzled out. It made them aware of the punk network in America. All its all ages venues. This was the legacy of DIY punk bands and zines. They had paved the way for punk music to be heard in every shithole town on the map. The Kills would visit these places in June/July 2002. Alison called all the venues and scheduled a tour, financing most of it on her credit card. They didn?t really say, ?Hey this is a Discount/Scarfo thing.? They had one song included on a compilation and nobody knew who they were. They started in year zero. That was the only way to move forward.

In music, it?s all about discovering some special and unique that could seem your own. It?s hard when there are a million bands and a million websites. Back in the 1970s, you only had the album to look at. Maybe there were a few magazines? When a band came into town, it was the only time you saw them. It was a special moment between you and the band. Now you can know the setlist and all the member?s birthdays before you ever see them. This is an era of the ?big squeeze.? We are ?inquisitive? about other?s dirty laundry all the time, but never about ourselves. You have to give to get.

The ?big squeeze? is not for new way of knowing. It?s not an adjustment on the thermostat. It is making you a parasite on the last carcass. It?s time to find a new pace to live, and get out of the dead person?s ass.

I read about The Kills in a local weekly. They were playing in Garden Grove, about five miles away from where I was. It was in some industrial park. It was some teenage halfway house. There were offices, couches, and a recreation room with a pool table. There were about fifty people who were half my age. Is this a place where the face of rock could be changed? The Kills were not the best-looking band. They performed to one another rather to the audience. They played about six songs. I bought the Black Rooster EP that day. I had never heard of Dim Mak records either.

The performance of The Kills peaked someone?s interest. They were most obviously interesting because there were only two of them and they had a drum machine. But I suppose most people wanted to see the other band that was a more conventional band with four members. I saw VV and Hotel walking around the hallways. They looked uncomfortable. I have read that some people complain about The Kills lack of ability to engage the audience. We are voyeurs on their private performance. This seems like beautiful music from the private of someone?s bedroom. The Kills don?t have a shtick. They can?t perform and make everyone happy. Whether it is imagined or not, The Kills are shy. They don?t want to be onstage. So when introverts get together, they seek out each other for comfort and lose themselves in the music.

They are nothing like The White Stripes. They are neither as talented nor good-looking. Jack White is a musical phenomena on his own. Just give him a stage and get out of the way. The Kills are very little like Mr. Airplane Man, The Black Keys, or Modey Lemon either. Those bands want to pay tribute to their record collections. The Kills are about right now, this moment.

There is much that is feminine and passive in music today. For one, almost every band I see today is composed of very good-looking people. This wasn?t true of 1970s bands like Rush, Queen, or Kiss. Punk bands wanted to confront you: your beliefs or your politics. Most cute bands today just want you to like them. In a way, most bands are not much different than Britney Spears. There is no Brechtian rush to the streets and to change the world with those feminine bands. The Kills is not very pretty. There is something unhealthy about them. They smoke cigarettes. VV almost looks anorexia. Kid Tsunami talks about needle exchanges (a leftover good will effort of punk) but VV doesn?t even look like she has any energy for that. They turn their backs on the audience in a slight way. They talk little between songs. They don?t crack jokes. It?s all music. It?s a wall of sound. You dig it or not.

Every need to ask a question is linked to the hunger for exhaustive answers.

Nostalgia is stronger than knowledge.

Rock and roll may have undergone significant changes in recent years, but The Kills' no-holds-barred brand of dramatic guitar music remains vivid, vibrant, and vital. Fuelled by a ceaseless spirit of forward motion, The Kills is the sound of one of our most potent and distinctive bands operating on all cylinders.

Where do they fit? Nowhere. You could say the same about The Velvet Underground? They don't. They're just The Velvets.

The Kills ?Black Rooster? EP is simple. It?s about simple things. There are grainy pictures. It sounds like it was recorded on a hand held tape machine. The cover looks like this is a movie poster. It?s a movie called ?The Kills? featuring VV and Hotel. There are the two and two amps. Four songs and ?Gum.? Some words from Kid Tsunami.

What is ?Gum?? When The Kills play live they play tapes of the voice of VV. In ?Gum? she sounds like a telemarketer or a phone sex operator. She says ?I?m doing this for you.? In the live show, Hotel triggers these tapes, as VV lights up a smoke. There is barely a reaction to the tapes. Oh here are those weird words. VV talks about hustling in another of her ?spoken word? pieces. Another is about a weatherman in Florida, I guess.

The first song ?Cat Claw? has the chorus ?You got it, I want it.? This could mean sex, drugs, or anything good around the corner. The Kills define an unknown desire on the first song. That lures us in. This sounds as distinct as any punk song in the past ten years.

On ?Black Rooster? they invoked the blues. Their blues takes place in the basement where they ?cuss and fight? and then more famously ?fuck and fight.? Even though Hotel sings the lead and says ?I?m not coming home again? it?s like he?s sealing the fate of The Kills. They are not taking no for an answer. They are not singing about an ex-girlfriend. They are light-years more mature than most of their contemporary.

?Wait? is slow. It sounds like waiting. It sounds like two people getting to know each other. VV sings ?Tell me about your ghosts? and sounds like a purgatory. ?Dropout Boogie? by Captain Beefheart is a recording made on April 4th, 2002. I am surprised that no other early recordings make it on this EP.

I met them in New York City in October 2002. They were playing a few shows in the area before heading back to record their album. Jamie told me that they were staying at the Chelsea Hotel, which was not far away from where I live. I soon discovered their interested in Andy Warhol and The Factory. Jamie said something like they would be more interested in getting a filmmaker like Paul Morrissey involved in the band, than a bass player. We talked about doing an interview that week. I called them the next day at four in the afternoon. They had just woken up. They soon found their way back to England.

When I heard the album, I knew this was an important band after all. Songs like ?Superstition? and ?Fried My Little Brains? were harder than anything before. Their confidence level in their performance had improved too. The audience?s reaction multiplied. They knew these songs. The video they did for ?Fried My Little Brain? was brilliant. It was lo-fi, scratchy, and sickly. The live video that Keith Martin shot in San Francisco is the same way. Music at its bare bones and its naked truth.

After seeing them play five times, in three different cities, I saw how they developed. I spoke to Jamie again after the San Francisco show in July 2003. He said they were going to Japan. I mentioned Warhol. Jamie said that there was some performance they were doing that was going to feature Gerard Malanga. So things have come full circle. There has always been, even with Warhol, an American fascination with European things. Yet there has simultaneously been a European fascination with America, epitomized by Warhol, Bob Dylan, and Edie Sedgwick. We have that vicious circle in one band called The Kills.

*********
Fried my little brains

Got six troubles on my back
like six little milk teeth gone bad
won't move over won't get gone
won't move over mmm
Fried my little brains
Fried my little brains
Fried my little brains
Fried my little brains mmm
Only got ten minutes better get me good
pull out my little milk teeth
pull good
Won't move over won't get gone
won't move over
Fried my little brains
fried my little brains
Fried my little brains
I pledge allegiance to the Kills of the United States of Black Rooster, and to the Cat Claw for which it stands: one kissy kissy under monkey 23, hitched, with superstition and gum for all.

The Face #67 in 40 messed up new bands issue
Vice Magazine
CMJ New Music Report 773 July 29, 2002 they charted #199 in Top 200

Reviews

".....a chain smoking 23 yr old American girl, a 'don't look at me' London boy with a thousand yard stare... The world is on fire right now. They've set it on fire. Maybe they realize it, maybe they don't. Certainly, they don't seem to care. It's Loud, offensive, there's a drone, and two beautiful voices, lungs of leather, burning rubber. They do this like they're playing chicken, digging the pedal into the floor board, shooting towards the cliff. They're playing chicken with me. They're doing this to me...Better luck I'd have, dodging bullets from a spinning gun. I could walk out of this venue and get to safety but I can't. I can't take my eyes off this. They're obsessed and this obsession's poisoned me. They've got an attitude I've never seen. I want to watch it. And more, I want to want it. I feel anxious. For whatever they are, they're unharnisable. They're out of control, and they're incredible." -**Kid Tsunami

Rockfeedback.com
"The Kills are a boy-girl two-piece... Yes, we said 'boy-girl two-piece.' The emergence of [Kills' members] VV and Hotel is that of a unique, entirely fuzzy and rather intriguing guitar-based duo with an image sassy as their low-slung, dirty and growling sound. Actually, like the Stripes, they don't have bass, instead melting their heavily-distorted upper guitar-strings into the rhythmic bases for each track...Frontwoman VV, complete with windswept hair covering her potential vision, is the most wicked example of the female-species, dancing sleekly alongside her mic-stand, sipping her vice from an elegant champagne-glass, whilst sounding like [wha?] PJ Harvey in her most angry moments."

Aversion Magazine
Black Rooster EP
A car pulls up outside a mid-sized club with a marquee that advertises one of the land's most well known punk acts. A couple junior-high aged kids hop out, shyly wave to their mom inside the car and promise to meet at a nearby street corner at an appointed hour. They then join a line that includes several other pairs of youngsters out for a night of rock'n'roll.

Just what the heck is going on here? Wasn't there a day when rock, and punk as an extension of rock's most threatening elements, was downright scary? When no responsible parent would dare drag her children to a night of wild rock'n'roll, let alone let them wander into a den of smarmy rockers unchaperoned? Has rock really lost its bite? Has the over-saturation of bands, market forces and an influx of interest, fans and all the other things money so loves, finally pulled the last tooth from rock's mouth?

No way, buddy. As long as there's bands like The Kills out there, rock will remain gloriously outside the boundaries of middle-school night outs, pinup-style band posters and adoring mainstream coverage, and that's just how part of the genre should be. While the duo, mysteriously known only as Hotel (most instruments and male vocals) and VV (female vocals, occasional guitar work), tempts comparisons to The White Stripes with its vintage sound and it's boy/girl lineup, Black Rooster is a much, much more dingy album than anything the Detroit duo could ever dream up. With a sound that captures some of the gnarlier bits of the Estrus catalog (a garage racket), Sonic Youth (lo-fi noise and abrasion) and the punk ethic (a no-future, fuck-all mentality), this EP delivers four tracks that bear the weight of 45 years' of rock'n'roll that's not quite ready for the mainstream eye. Whether the pair conjures up tales of subterranean sex, violence and other teenage misbehavior ["Black Rooster (Fuck and Fight)"], or toys with a squirming barrage of slow, noisy riffs that's one part garage-blues and one part that's all The Kills' own ("Wait"), The Kills are the sort of band that make desperate music for desperate people.

Recklessness shouldn't come as a gleeful little treat in rock'n'roll, but it does. Black Rooster's a joyful treat for anyone who still sees rock'n'roll as the music of outsiders, rebels and other unwanted souls rather than a soundtrack to conventional and predictable little lives.

Neumu Online
Black Rooster EP
Pushing and pulling, demanding and yearning, sweating, shaking and swaggering — the first EP release from London's raw, trashy punk two-piece The Kills is truly hot. Female singer VV can be tough and threatening but also sweetly seductive. Her male partner Hotel's guitar grinds and winds around VV's voice as if to capture her reckless spirit. The garage drumming, also by Hotel, is low and thumping, providing a shady backdrop.

Let's call Black Rooster a three-song record, even though it actually includes five tracks. After all, one is a cover of Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band's "Dropout Boogie" and the closer is not music but merely obnoxious samples of gum-smacking and a woman asking, "Do you like this sound?" Uh, no, but the rest of the record? Yes, very much so!

The rough, sexy first three songs are great. The opener and the record's most fiery track, "Cat Claw" struts and thrusts Stones-style behind lusty, forceful sneers: "You got it/ I want it," repeats VV in an irrefutable tone — you better give it to her. The drugged-up-feeling title track finds the duo sharing vocal duties, adding an extra dimension to the music. "You wanna fuck and fight," Hotel leers atop slithering guitar. "In the basement," pleads VV, finishing his sentence. "The kid likes to fuck and fight/ In the basement ... I'm not coming home again," they continue. Opening with the unmistakable drum and tambourine sounds of the Velvet's "Heroin," the droning and desperate "Wait" is, although derivative, powerfully emotional, sad and pretty. Black Rooster hints at something great to come — a record (due by mid-2003) with not three excellent songs but 10 or 12, maybe. When it arrives, I'll be ready. by Jenny Tatone

BLENDER #9
4 Stars
Kinky garage rock full of snarling attitude from mysteriously named duo, a junior version of the White Stripes. "You wanna fuck and fight?"the Kills ask in "Black Rooster", the smashing highlight of their five-song garage-rock debut EP. The song lurches drunkenly, full of menace, with stumbling drums tumbling over sharp, slurred slide guitar, all played by Hotel (aka Jamie Hince, a Brit). His partner, singer VV (aka Alison Mosshart, an American), moans, taunts and makes demands like Chrissie Hynde's maladjusted stepdaughter. Adding a wild cover of Captain Beefheart's gnarled "Dropout Boogie", the Kills turn blues imagery into tough attitude, landing between the overloaded lo-fi mayhem of Sonic Youth and the concise minimalism of the White Stripes. Rob Tannenbaum

GIANT ROBOT #26
"Black Rooster"
Taking turns belting out their respective female and male vocals, The Kills members VV and Hotel produce raw, sweaty, fuzzed-out blues rock that's up there with Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the Laughing Hyenas. The first cut, "Cat Claw" tackles the Donnas-like theme of sexual swagger with Joan Jett's nerve and Maria McKee's twang. The second song, "Black Rooster (Fuck and Fight)" comes across like a Darkland's era Jesus and Mary Chain on moonshine. The remaining three songs are equallly raw and powerful, including a live version of "Dropout Boogie" to prove the duo delivers the goods onstage. The energy that The Kills generate so naturally blows away most bands with twice as many members. MW

The Weekly Dig 7/24-7/31 2002
This would be a good make-out album if it weren't for the last track "Gum", in which the female vocalist chews gum and asks in a vaguely sexual (but not sexy) way wheter "you like it when (she) chews gum." The final track is not indicative ofthe other four songs on the EP, however, which are solid Rock and Roll tunes. VV's strength as a vocalist is clear, as she traverses the line between rock and country music, resulting in a "down home" Southern rock sound, somewhat reminiscent of The Gossip. VV's crooning, coupled with Hotel's mix of sexy rocker vocals a la Thurston Moore and his occasional throaty snarls and yows results in a combo that really works, offering a welcome alternative to the uninspiring pop rock inundating the Rock and Roll mainstream. Make-out partner not included. - Erika Gully-Santiago

Kerrang Aug 3, 2002
Black Rooster EP
KKKK
Back in the mists of time (Well, 1994 at least...), The Jesus and Mary Chain collaborated with Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval on the song 'Sometimes Always'. If that union had produced more offspring, then they would sound like The Kills. Comprising VV, a rich-voiced, country girl singer from the United States, and a British bloke called Hotel, these multi-national newcomers 'Black Rooster' EP combines spit n' sawdust lo-fi fuzz with mouthfuls of soul. They're never going to be enormousl famous, bu The Kills could well be a cult favourite in the making. Which, from the sound of this, would be probably suit them down to the ground. Emma Johnston

Punknews.org
The Kills- Black Rooster
This is a tricky release. See Alison from Discount decided to move to London. She is in the Kills. Her and this guy. Hotel. Her name is VV. So this band gets labeled as a UK band with hotel and VV, and I say HA! I know its you Alison from florida, you can't fool me! I am just so very smart. Anyway, this is a 5 track/ 4 song Ep which after the cover song "dropout boogie", is really 3 original songs.

Yet it plays like a record twice as long, because its 4 good songs, even the cover is good. I bought it without hearing what they sounded like, and the reviews I read didn't help. So I went in blindly. I'm glad I don't listen to myself a lot, and bought it.

It's not pop-punk, and Alison's code name may just to prevent being tagged as that singer in Discount. All I know is its really good. As far as music, its rock. Not nirvana, or the vines rock, and not old classic rock. I mean midtempo garage rock with an emphasis on attitude. Its only two people, and live they use a drum machine, so its a straight forward and minimal rock machine. The moment you hear the first track "Cat claw" head bob out, your hooked. Alison, or if I must, VV, sings the first line with presence and attitude ending with "cmon, sugar" before snare drum rim taps come in, and you can't believe how much style this has until the chorus of "Got it, I want it" over and over rocks your sorry ass into submission. The second song trades off vocals between Alison and Hotel, in an equally rocking number "Black Rooster (fuck and fight)" before my favorite song "Wait", which slows down a bit and has them trading vocals that contrast and compliment the down home feel of the song.

The recording is raw and strong. There's also a picture of VV with her hair down over her face, Alison's normally dreddy hair nowhere to be found, I almost didn't recognize her.

I have to admit this isn't the kind of music I'm used to describing so if you're still trying to figure it out, all I can say give it a try, if you like the rock sound nostalgically being brought back, this is much better than any of that elitist crap with twice as much style and pizzaz. Check out their band page for more information. I'm fortunate enough to see them play on the 12th. Other Discount members are in UNITAS and I know the one guy whose married to the girl from Bis are in a project together called The Kitchen who have a split coming out with the selby tigers.

Free Williamsburg Online
The Kills "Black Rooster" EP
The Kills is a two member band with the mysterious names VV and Hotel. Their potent music is raw, loud, and unrestrained. VV is like a young PJ Harvey and she sings with her hair in her face. Hotel jerks around like a vibrator out of control. The duo sort of recall Royal Trux. They have already been played on John Peel's radio show. Even though there is a minimalism and a raw nerve to their music, it makes an impression. They are ready to explode.

The first track"Cat Claw" is the best song on the EP. This is a band dedicated to rocking and to shaking shit up. "Black Rooster," sung by Hotel, has the great line "You want to fuck and fight." I have had relationships like that. "Wait" is another aggressive song which highlights the interplay between the two members. They also cover "Dropout Boogie" by Captain Beefheart. Live VV and Hotel both sing and play guitars aided by a drum machine. This is a band to check out when they put out a full length album. They are already creating a following. - Alexander Laurence TIme Out June 20-27 #351
Luxx 8pm. $7 Semiautomatic + Knife Skills +Espadrille + The Kills (Secret Yeah Yeah Yeahs show) THe Kills' VV and Hotel (yes, those are the names of people) achieve the kind of snotty, straight-from-the-garage attitude once perfected by Royal Trux. The duo's Black Rooster EP (Dim Mak) is a greasy (in a good way) slice of drums-and-guitar rock.

Show Reviews

THE KILLS at the Silverlake Lounge, July 18
Mike Watt calls them clone bands: those groups who wear their influences not just on their sleeves but in their hearts and souls, too. This is a murderously apt observation, especially when applied to the bands Watt usually applies it to -- groups with one eye on what's happening on the charts, the other on their bank-account statements. But it's a term with so much sting that it gets bandied about too easily, perhaps because, with those two words, the status of Wise Observer is conferred on the speaker, whose total dismissal of the "clones" owes to his/her highly subjective "higher standards."

You could watch these two young bands, from different parts of the Earth, playing the same night less than a mile apart, and dismiss them within 10 minutes as clone bands if you wanted to. And that'd be your loss, for three reasons: a) some things are worth hearing -- and seeing -- again; b) these bands work in rich idioms that deserve the exploration they're being given; and c) these guys are special. The Datsuns are a four-piece band of rock & roll gymnasts from New Zealand. They're young and enthusiastic, longhaired and Levi'd, and they play rock that owes absolutely everything to AC/DC, the Stooges, Radio Birdman, the Ramones, the Hellacopters and so on. They are not punks on a kitsch trick, taking the piss, but they're not idea-deficient clones either. At Spaceland, in the face of a crowd that was either too industrybot-heavy or simply too shocked by the band's '70s/'80s Sunset Strip antics to appreciate what they were witnessing, the Datsuns put on a show to remember: One particularly tiny guitarist wandered into the audience several times, midsong, playing guitar; the other was on top of the amplifier stacks at one point. They have songs with titles -- "Fink for the Man," "Hootchie Mama," "Motherfucker From Hell," etc. -- as good as the ensemble plays their riffs and melodies. This was the best meat 'n' potatoes, red-blooded rock & roll performed by skinny, charismatic young guys I've witnessed in eons.

The Kills are a duo, a self-proclaimed lawless, left-field Bonnie and Clyde of rock & roll. The British dude (code name: Hotel) triggers the drum machine, plays droning, bug-eyed Velvets-blues guitar and sings in a monotone. The American chick (code name: VV) plays guitar sometimes, hangs her long hair like a lampshade across her face, and sings like Chrissie Hynde crossed with PJ Harvey and Royal Trux's Jennifer Herema: sass and bourbon, croons and sighs. They've played together for less than a year and already have several songs that sound like deserved radio hits: hot stuff with grooves, builds and explosive choruses. Live, VV and Hotel play like one of the great rock & roll couples -- locking stares, making motions and sounds charged with private meaning, etc. -- but even Ike and Tina (and Neil and Jennifer, Iggy and Bowie, Kurt 'n' Courtney) never performed regularly as a duo. The Kills do this, taking the stakes higher, making everything that much edgier, pushing the audience into voyeur territory. Watching the Kills bumping and grinding for each other with such joy and abandon, I felt like one of those fans at Toronto's baseball stadium who a few years ago were treated to a midgame sex show by a couple going at it in their private hotel room above the SkyDome's outfield fence, unaware that the entire stadium could see what they were doing. Those fans didn't avert their eyes: They cheered. It didn't matter how many times they'd done it, or seen it -- good sex was still something to be celebrated.

And so is good music. Right?

SCORING THE CLUBS PREVIEW:
July 18, 2002 The Kills at the Silverlake Lounge
What a pleasure it is to see/hear bands young burbling up from the underground who can write decent songs, play their instruments with a degree of competence and ingenuity, and demonstrate some of the shamanic, seductive star/sexpower/attitude necessary to good rocknroll. The Kills--American girl called VV on gorgeous country-tinged vocals, British guy called Hotel on guitar and the other vocals--are one such band, at least on record: their new "Black Rooster" EP (Dimmak) is four songs of post-Velvets/Mary Chain lust and bitterness from the edge, crooned and sighed with equal parts vinegar and spit. They play tonight--with drum machine--around midnight. Also performing: Dance Disaster Movement, Butcher Holler, Radio Vago and The Fuse. (Jay Babcock)

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