Kills No Wow

You pretty much know what you'll get with The Kills, and No Wow, their second album, follows the same stripped and raw aesthetic that you'd expect. VV and Hotel sound and look as debauched and damaged as ever, reeking of shady hotels, trackmarks and stale cigarettes. Their title sets an ambitious marker, namely to introduce the 'wow' factor they think is missing from their contemporaries, and they approach this by removing all extraneous elements from the rock 'n' roll formula - only primeval drums, electric strings and cracked vocals remain. Hmm. Sounds strangely familiar. The blueprint is inscribed on the opening title track - grinding bass, stuttering, flat drums and Patti Smith-esque vocals. After a couple of minutes there's a brief explosion of energy and the slightest suspicion of some production. Although not much.

Love is a deserter follows after an interlude of noise and background speech; it's the familiar mix of splintered guitars and growling menace. Lyrically there's a strong danger of cliché; it's guns, drugs and rebellion of one sort or another. A romantic combination, but not one with that much mileage. Dead Road is another case in point - quiet and menacing, but insistent on the Death Valley imagery. Similarly, The Good One's, a druggy, filthy up-tempo trawl, starts to sound formulaic. The central track, I hate the way you love, takes both its parts to relay a perverse anti-love story over a backing of jarring, messy guitars. Essentially The Kills are soundtracking Badlands, and through the second half of the piece it's formulaic and iterative; the Joplin/Smith/Velvets model has more room for energy, joy and thrills. The closest we get to variation is the final piano ballad, Ticket Man. Well, it's not really a ballad, but it's as close as The Kills are likely to offer.

So, if you've enjoyed what you've heard before, you won't be disappointed - all the darkness, grime and perversion is here or implied. The musical model is very familiar. But if you're looking for variation, innovation, or thematic depth, it's unlikely you'll find it here.