MUSIC

The Kills

The Kills didn't have a lot to say between songs during their Friday-night set at the Black Cat. Instead, the U.K.-based duo generally let their bodies do the talking.

Guitarist Jamie "Hotel" Hince and vocalist Alison "VV" Mosshart seemingly struck every pose in the Lou Reed/Iggy Pop playbook. Mosshart used the industrial Bo Diddley rhythms of such songs as "No Wow" to moan, cavort and do things with the mike stand that nice girls try only behind closed doors with someone they love. Meanwhile, Hince strutted about the stage, making guitar-as-machine-gun gestures and splattering the audience with bursts of jittery noise.

Just in case the point hadn't been hammered home, a projector displayed myriad images of fashionable self-destruction -- from films of country singer Townes Van Zandt to random '60s psychedelic jam-session footage -- and colored lights made the stage look as if it were about to combust with wild and reckless abandon. But after 60 minutes or so, the shtick had worn thin.

"You can't survive on ice cream," Mosshart sang during the catchy schoolyard stomp of "Cheap and Cheerful," and the band might have been wise to take its own lyrics to heart. Full of good looks and sexy hooks, the duo's performance was not unlike an hour's worth of makeup advertisements: high on style and low on substance. The Kills' intended message might have been "We are thrilling," but a more apt one would have been: "We are exhausting."

-- Aaron Leitko

Chamber Orchestra Of Philadelphia

It was chamber music sweet and lovely, but it put the listener in an opera frame of mind. Such was the revelation of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia's concert at the Library of Congress on Friday evening. This superb and youthful ensemble -- one of the nation's finer chamber groups -- opened a window into conversation and intimacy in Mozart's Piano Concerto in C, while Beethoven's "Pastoral" Symphony conjured panoramas that presage the mystical worlds of Wagner and other musical pioneers.

Ignat Solzhenitsyn, the ensemble's music director (and, yes, the great Russian author's son), was conductor and soloist in Mozart's gorgeous concerto (K. 467). Solzhenitsyn made piano phrases sing in a vocal manner; filigreed and shapely, each phrase rose and grew naturally. In the opening, a vigorous back-and-forth occurred between a loner (piano) and crowd (ensemble, helped along by some marvelous woodwind solos). The second movement, used in Bo Widerberg's 1967 film "Elvira Madigan," came off as a soliloquy-like aria, and the finale was all light, tension resolved in a joyous ensemble set-piece.

The Beethoven -- blended and resonant -- brought forth images of dark storms and bountiful nature preserves. The technicolor brilliance came from the small ensemble, which allowed for fast tempos and superior detail. Perhaps Wagner gained some of his scene-painting mastery for this music; as a conductor, he banged the drum loudly on Beethoven's behalf. Little wonder, then, that the orchestra's vigorous account signaled latter-day evocative dramas such as the epic "Ring."

-- Daniel Ginsberg