Home > Denver Music > CD Review > The Kills, 'Midnight Boom'

Backstory: The ambiguously sexualized duo of Alison “VV” Mosshart and Jamie “Hotel” Hince—are they a couple or aren’t they?—first emerged in 2001 with a self-produced demo that already showcased their stripped-down, menacing sound. After two full-length albums for legendary British label Rough Trade, they’ve jumped ship to the hipper and hotter Domino Records (Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand) to release their third and most groove-heavy record to date.

Why you should care: The Kills make rock ‘n’ roll the way a master chef makes a great reduction-based sauce—using very few ingredients and cooking them down to intensify the flavors. In the case of the Kills, those ingredients are sex, death, swaggering beats, tightly wound guitar riffs and lusty, menacing vocals—and really, what else does rock music need?

Verdict: With heavier beats, nastier guitars and some of Mosshart’s tartest lyrical one-liners (“I want you to be crazy cos you’re stupid, baby, when you’re sane”), “Midnight Boom” is the most satisfying Kills album to date, a near-perfect embodiment of rock at its darkest, sexiest and most primitive. What’s most amazing about “Midnight Boom” is the way Hince and Mosshart still find manage to find variety within the claustrophobic constraints of their sound, which is made up almost entirely of drum machines, sneering vocals and Hince’s razorblade guitar licks. There’s a catchy pop single (“Cheap and Cheerful”), a dreamy, PJ Harvey–esque ballad (“Black Balloon”) and the sharpest critique of the Big Apple (“What New York Used to Be”) since LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy told the city it was bringing him down.

X-Factor: Four of the grittiest tracks on “Midnight Boom,” including the three aforementioned highlights, feature additional beats and production courtesy of Spank Rock’s Alex Epton, a.k.a. XXXchange.