Aram's Full Review: Keep on Your Mean Side [PA] by The Kills
I've been fortunate enough to have heard some good bands this year. I guess. What I mean to say is I've been hearing a lot of bands lately that are "just" good. Which presents a not insignificant little dilemma for me.
How should I feel about music that is good, but not great?
For those of you who don't know, I am a very, very, VERY opinionated person. I have an extremely low tolerance for crap, and I get probably more upset than I ought to by music that is not bad, just middle-of-the-road and ubiquitous. (cough, cough! Jack Johnson! cough! ahem.)
And while the Kills are neither as ubiquitous nor as horribly, awfully bad as anything my local "modern rock" radio station has been paid to champion, they remain just south of "great." I mean, yeah, they do the whole harder than thou, 21st century boy/girl blues rock thing as good as anyone else, sure. Maybe I'm just a picky bastard. I don't know. Alison Mossheart belts her little heart out on numbers like "Superstition" and "F*ck the People." The awkwardly nicknamed Hotel is adept punching out fuzzed-up blues chords and there's a drum machine for some reason, but the whole thing manages to equal merely the sum of its parts, nothing more. Is it wrong of me to want anything more?
The answer to my self-imposed question: it's not wrong per se, or rather, it wouldn't be wrong if the band in question didn't make themselves out to be such f*cking hotshots. I mean, if you're going to have a song called "Gypsy Death & You" you had better make damn sure that it kicks some serious f*cking a$$. Because if it doesn't, people are going to feel let down. And I felt let down.
I don't want to seem like I'm overstressing the point, I mean, there are some really good songs on the album. The refreshingly understated "Wait" is a great example, as is the other side of the coin, the posturing but still likable "Cat Claw." Mossheart's vocal style works especially well in the latter. Also enjoyable was "Superstition," which again finds the duo recontextualizing the style (if not literal sound) of iconic '80s bar band groups like Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.
So yeah. Final analysis time. Um. OK. The Kills are clearly riding the candycane colored coattails of the White Stripes, without whom they wouldn't be anywhere today, not even Rough Trade. And so as not to p*ss anyone off and become the recipient of a thousand ill-informed e-mails: I know the Kills sound nothing like the White Stripes. Or the Raveonettes. Or Milemarker. Or Sonny & Cher, or any other two-person group consisting of a male and a female. They're just riding the same (or a similar) wave as groups like that.
Well, obviously not Sonny & Cher. He died in a skiing accident and has a stretch of desert highway in Southern California named after him, and she continues to torment the living with her every album release. You know what I mean.
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