"So I went to see her play, and I've never seen someone come alive so much on stage. It really seemed like that's where she was natural. It was almost as if where she wasn't performing was on stage, and off stage was where she was trying to fit into some sort of social etiquette. We started talking after, and she told me she was sitting on the steps outside my apartment listening to my music and was really fascinated by it."
They quickly discovered shared passions for self-made art, journal-keeping, photography and filmmaking, cheap guitars, lo-fi gear and the Velvet Underground/Andy Warhol universe, particularly tragic Warhol dandy Edie Sedgwick. After Mosshart returned to Florida, she kept in touch via mail and the occasional transatlantic phone call. The notion of coming together professionally happened so organically it wasn't until Mosshart booked a one-way ticket back to London almost a year later that such a denouement seemed possible.
During live shows, the Kills -- Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart -- seem magnetically drawn toward each other.
(Ione Saizar)
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"We started writing to each other and would put pieces of artwork in the letters, and before long there would be a video of some movie we'd made and sent to each other," Hince recalls. "And before we knew it, we were making music and sending each other four-track copies of things and then the other person would add to it. It wasn't planned out -- 'How can we be in a band 4,000 miles away from each other?' -- it just developed like that. I guess the last part was Alison saying '[Expletive] this, I'm moving to England!' "
Scraping along, the duo benefited from the oddest benefaction: A neighbor of Hince's who'd pursued a side career as the David Brenton One Man Band died, and his widow threw out all his recording equipment.
"I still shiver when I think of that," Hince says. "We wanted to record but didn't have any cables or microphones, and one day Alison walked out of the apartment and there was this dumpster full of cables and microphones. It sounds made up and I can hear it when I say it out loud, but I swear on my life that's exactly how it happened, the most bizarre thing in my life.
"We hauled all this stuff out of the dumpster and started soldering wires together, then stayed up and recorded about eight songs in two days just from that gear," Hince adds. "We owe a huge debt to David Brenton, wherever he may be."
Going public, the Kills found themselves attached to the burgeoning garage-punk revival, their minimalist boy-girl blues-influenced sound earning comparisons to the White Stripes and Royal Trux, and Mosshart's voice to Patti Smith and P.J. Harvey. Just as buzz started building, Mosshart's visa ran out, so she and Hince headed to America for an impromptu tour.
They eventually returned to London, recorded the "Black Rooster" EP and, soon after, "Keep on Your Mean Side," which featured scraps of music and messages sent across the Atlantic. "Keep on Your Mean Side" was made at producer Liam Watson's ultra-cool Toe Rag Studios in London, known for its '60s vintage analog equipment. "No Wow" is even more bare-knuckled than its predecessor.
"We weren't trying to make it more raw," Hince insists. "I just wanted to dispose of all the effects, didn't want reverb on it. 'Keep on Your Mean Side' felt like it was recorded at a distance, and I wanted this to be the antithesis of that one, wanted it to be right up front in the speakers."
Plus, he adds, "the first record was mistaken as a celebration of rock, yet I never felt like that. I always felt an affiliation to the drum machine and the birth of electronic music, and that was always the direction we were going on this record. I wanted to sort of exorcize my demons and my influences with Cabaret Voltaire and Suicide and bands like that that were mostly duos with very strict backing. That was the inspiration for starting our band, a lot more so than Robert Johnson or Charley Patton, which is what people associate the first record with."
In any case, Hince says, "the flavor of that [drum machine] sound is liberating. One song can sound like some sort of organic foot stomp and the next like some sort of weird electro thing."
As for the bleak nature of much of their material, Hince calls it "fascinating that in music, if your themes are dark or vicious or tapping into the darker side of human nature, it's considered underground and alternative, whereas in cinema and literature, those things are almost expected. They're entirely celebrated and accepted in the mainstream, to the extent that a film would probably bomb if it didn't have some sort of sex and violence to it."
THE KILLS -- Appearing Wednesday at the Black Cat with Scout Niblett and the Routineers. • To hear a free Sound Bite from the Kills, call Post-Haste at 301-313-2200 and press 8121. (Prince William residents, call 703-690-4110.)
