The Kills
"No Wow"
Rough Trade/RCA

Do you like your rock and roll dirty? Are you sick of people singing glossy songs? Have you wondered where the sleaze and dirt has disappeared too? If you answered yes to these questions, then you need to go out and buy this album now.

The Kills are back with their follow up to 2003’s Keep on your Mean Side, and their fans will not be disappointed. This album could be the soundtrack to a sex filled weekend fueled by booze and opiates in a New York City flophouse. And I mean that in the very best way. This album just oozes sex. Not romance, not sensuality, not sexuality, not even lust. Just pure raw, dirty, sweaty, smelly, we’ve been up for 3 days straight sex. And I can’t get enough of it. The opening title track is almost a musical map of sex. It starts of slow, with a more subdued beat, and gradually, that beat gets louder and more pronounced.

The album opens with the line, “You’re gonna have to step over my dead body/ Before you walk out that door,” and from that first line until the last, VV snarls and moans through 11 songs while backed up on guitar (and occasional background vocals) by Hotel. The duo doesn’t break any musical ground here. Why write another verse when you can just repeat the first one again? It’s been criticized for being repetitive (probably due to their use of a drum machine), but shit, a lot of the Beatles’ songs were repetitive, (case in point, “I Want to Hold Your Hand”) and those Limey bastards got Knighted (or killed). But the fact of the matter is that sometimes a song doesn’t need a second verse and a pre-chorus. No Wow props up motto, “simpler is better,” and I couldn’t agree more.

This album is raw. It sounds like it was recorded in one day with old dusty equipment. Lo-fi people will love this. And so should you.

Reviewed by: Josh Goldfarb
Reviewed on: March 30, 2005