Public Servant Lifestyle

Meet The Kills, an Anglo-US co-production mining the same rich musical vein as Royal Trux and early PJ Harvey.

The Kills - Keep on Your Mean Side.

The Kills - two musicians from two countries (the US and UK), mysteriously going by the names ?VV? and ?Hotel? have produced what may just turn out to be the debut album of the year.

Keep on Your Mean Side is an intense collision of styles; reminscent of the original PJ Harvey band, the sleaze of Royal Trux and the best of The Velvet Undergrounds' trashiest New York grind.

So how did this all come about? One half of The Kills - VV - explains the genesis of the band: "We met in London, kind of looked at one another and wrote each other down. At the end of a different year, we met again, shook hands, decided to write some music together/transcontinentally. I was living in America, renting a cheap room, had a borrowed 4-track and a mic made out of a telephone.

"I sent him tapes. He?d send me his. We?d add to each other?s and send them back and forth. That lasted about 6 months. Neither of us really liked doing it that way. It took too long; it wasn?t spontaneous. The waiting amounted to so much anxiety. One morning I bought a plane ticket when I got the cash together, called him and said. ?I?m coming, I?m moving?."

The ?Postmark? Sessions

And so it was that on the first day of January, 2000 what the band now refer to as the ?postmark? sessions came to an end. VV continues: "We spent the first couple of months together trying to fix his broken gear. I don?t remember us ever successfully fixing a goddamn thing. We wound up buying a couple of two dollar guitars from a junk shop and locking the door for four to five months..."

From these humble do-it-yourself origins the duo went on to make their first recording on a one-legged quarter inch machine over tape reels of foreign news radio programs.

Before going into record, Hotel - real name Jamie, ex of Scarfo - and VV - the American half of the duo, real name Alison - played a few gigs, just to see if just the two of them could pull the songs off live. This experiment worked and two days later they had recorded Cat Claw, Black Rooster and Wait, which combined, made up the group?s demo.

Genesis

Two years on and Hotel and VV played their first gigs as The Kills. By the summer - following just a handful of UK dates ? the twosome had embarked on a self financed three month tour of the US, playing 50 gigs, covering 14,000 miles and amassing over a thousand dollars in speeding fines.

VV picks up the tale: "My visa was to expire by summer; I needed to leave the country. So we booked a 3 month tour of the states for June, July and August. We?d played 5 or 6 gigs in London when we flew out?during a few days off in Detroit, we shot the super-8 films for Wait. We returned to London, did a short tour of the UK and finished at the ICA. We flew to New York again the next morning for another tour, a month that combined the north, south and Midwest."

On their return to the UK, they wrote and recorded the ace Black Rooster EP and booked some time at Toe Rag studios in London, with Liam Watson. Black Rooster came out as five tracks of scuzzed up, pared down blues (including one great ?nay inspired - Captain Beefheart cover in the form of Dropout Boogie, originally from Safe As Milk) showcasing their sound and showing off their credentials while setting the blueprint for what was to follow.

In November last year, The Kills returned to East London?s Toe Rag studios to record their newly released debut album, Keep on Your Mean Side.

Racket

Recorded in just 18 days, the album?s twelve tracks encapsulate a sound and attitude that?s fervent, gritty, visceral and intense. Included here are the tracks Cat Claw, Wait and Black Rooster all taken from their debut EP - pointing latecomers to the best destinations reached by the band in the past ? with a clutch of new songs (not least the single Fried My Little Brains) that are NOW! On Hitched The Kills come on like T. Rex at first, only to descend into what is rapidly becoming a glorious trademark racket.

Following slots supporting the John Spencer Blues Explosion and Primal Scream ? with whom the band share more than a little, musically ? The Kills embarked on a short but triumphant tour of their own. The tour took in the London Astoria and Manchester?s Roadhouse, amongst others.

Keep on Your Mean Side is available now, as is the Black Rooster EP. The latest single from The Kills - Fried My Little Brains - is also out now, from Domino.

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