The range of the band’s talents was demonstrated in “El Paso”, which not only had a slight country and western feel, making use of a violin. This was promising opening to the evening from an intriguing and talented band.

There was a semi-muted response for Hotel and VV (alias Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart) when they arrived on stage to perform, owing to the fact the unassuming duet had previously been on the stage several times setting up their own equipment. However, the response was a lot different after the opener ‘Superstition’ was sung with passion by VV, with her usual attitude of Polly J Harvey and shyness and mysteriousness of Meg White. She barely spoke to the audience only to acknowledge the well received rapturous ovation with a muted ”cheers,” the kind of which is usually emitted by a shy young girl receiving a lollipop from her grandma. The darker side of the band came out in the following tune ‘Pull A U’ a The Pixies meets The Yeah Yeah Yeahs:

‘Pull A U and u r sexy car, got your black magic
and your two dollar love.’

The set mainly covered the debut album ‘Keep on your Mean side’ with ‘Wait’ being the only omission. ‘Kissy Kissy’ was always going to be a highlight as the two protagonists hiss at and serenade each other whilst squaring up over the same microphone, resembling Tyson and Lewis more than Romeo and Juliet. The sexual tension between the pair had the potential of making the drum machine blush. Let alone the adoring crowd, who was at its most frenetic during the hard rocking number ‘Catclaw’.

In the encore and penultimate track VV entered the stage on her own and sang the chilled out acoustic based ‘Gypsy Death & You’. This soothed and calmed everyone ending things nicely with dark poetic lyrics about growing apart:

“Now when looks at you She covers one eye,
cos she can see into your mind. She no longer wants to.”

This song provides an extra dimension to The Kills and will hopefully help them to stay around in the ever fickle music industry.

David Adair