The fixated words of ‘Heart Of a Dog’ – the second song from The Kills fifth album Ash & Ice – has their etching of a chanteuse Alison Mosshart eking out “I need you, don’t ask me what it is, I want strings attached. I’m loyal”.
In a grown up world those words could mean almost anything; metaphors which might relate to seedy pursuits in rubbish clogged doorways, or a million less or more innocent-to-perverse entendres that try to place a value on desire.
This carnality comes as more of a surprise given that the anglophile Mosshart and partner in grime Jamie Hince are in fact one of the few couples on earth who relate at a level which will never reach biology (as evidenced by her being his best man), early pioneers of the friend zone since first meeting in the late 90s. Much has changed since the duo’s first release, ‘Keep Me On Your Mean Side‘, in 2003, but going back over the last fifteen or so years there’s very much a suspicion that more has stayed the same.
The grains aren’t hard to find, for whilst the programming on the opener is a little more sophisticated than on ‘Superstition‘, ‘Doing It To Death‘ is as much indebted to their core values, with Hince’s gyrating riffs punctuating his muse’s anodyne howl and chiselling out a hip-gyrating funk of old.
If it’s a groove that they lock into effortlessly despite it being five years since their last release ‘Blood Pressures‘, then that belies the strife which preceded it. Always the perpetrator of an unconventional playing style, Hince ended up damaging his hand so badly on the tour that accompanied it the very real possibility of no longer being able to play dogged him for several months afterwards.
Now reinvigorated, whilst The Kills modus operandi remains in it ain’t broke territory, ‘Ash & Ice‘ finds them retaining their essence whilst moving forward enough to keep less obsessive fans happy. ‘Hard Habit To Break‘s pads for instance skitter at bedroom techno pace – although Hince’s trademark jags slip in after a few unfamiliar moments – whilst the desultory wind of ‘Days Of Why and How‘ is a heavy dose of their obsession blues countered with lo-fi swatches of urban jack-in-the-box beats.
Perhaps much of what’s going on is subliminal, or instinctive such that neither Hince nor Alison Mosshart are prepared to acknowledge Plato as a fraud. We shouldn’t care though, because the harder they try, the better they fight, ‘Impossible Tracks‘ a rolling, lip curl of a song, the lusty smear of distortion turning the singer’s voice into something midway between desperation and duelling, whilst the cracked soul of ‘Black Tar‘ is the pair at their most cinematic.
If The Kills’ whole thing is around chemistry rather than artistry, ‘Ash & Ice’s slower moments would be something more of an acid test; instead the momentum shifts of ‘Echo Home‘ and ‘That Love‘ find them at their most strung out, heartbroken and naked, the latter staring lyrically at the sort of inevitable dead end many romantic, primal relationships reach when the physical intoxication runs to empty.
It’s rare indeed for artists to stay so in thrall to their own design for so long, especially when the whole art form around them continues to digest and regurgitate itself on an ever decreasing cycle of cannibalistic fervour. Mosshart and Hince have remained true to themselves in a way few others could even contemplate, much less sustain so successfully, and ‘Ash & Ice’ demonstrates that they’ve regained a momentum but more importantly a hunger which half after a decade away could easily have halted permanently.
It’s almost impossible to believe that all this aphrodisia comes from non-consummation, but for once waiting rarely sounded this good.
