Kills No Wow CD

The Kills/Alison Mosshart: Jamie Hince (vocals, guitar, drums, percussion); Alison Mosshart (vocals).
It's hard to believe that the Kills could sound even darker, tighter, and more stripped-down than they did on Keep on Your Mean Side, but somehow they managed it: No Wow is one of the most highly concentrated rock albums in a long, long time. In fact, its tight focus and barely relenting intensity make Keep on Your Mean Side's more traditional ebb and flow feel downright slack. The band's throbbing guitars, to-the-point rhythms, and sexy, dangerous lyrics have been simmered and tempered down to their barest essences, so much so that No Wow often feels like a stark, stylized caricature of rock. Less is usually more for the Kills, though, and they sound more powerful, more confident, and more distinctive here than they did on their debut. "No Wow" itself is a fantastic opener, a powerful statement of intent and of curdled but still compelling love (or lust), the likes of which hasn't been heard since Rid of Me's title track. From there, the album doesn't let up until the sweetly narcotized "I Hate the Way You Love, Pt. 2." Most of No Wow feels like monochromatic variations on the same sounds and themes -- monochromatic, but not monotonous. Wisely, the Kills have chosen to let their drum machine sound like a drum machine, giving songs like "Love Is a Deserter" a skeletal clatter for a backbone, and others, such as "The Good Ones" and "Sweet Cloud," a piston-like thrust. The magnificently taut "Dead Road 7" adds shades of menacing, mysterious country/blues storytelling to the band's songwriting, a direction they should pursue more. At times, No Wow can feel a little too compressed and high-contrast for its own good -- the album downplays the poppier moments that balanced Keep on Your Mean Side's onslaughts. However, since there are so few soft, slow songs here, they're thrown into even sharper relief. "Rodeo Town" is one of the loveliest, and grittiest, ballads that the band has written, and "Ticket Man" ends the album on a hypnotic, reflective note. And though Hotel's vocals are also downplayed (and missed), it has to be said that VV does a compelling job of handling the lioness' share of the singing. A tight, mean set of songs, No Wow feels like a fight going on in a closet -- there's no room for punches to swing, but all of the shoving and grappling makes just as big an impact. ~ Heather Phares
After the overwhelming success of the White Stripes, the rock & roll rulebook changed. In this new rock order, size was no longer everything--the fewer band members, the better (boy/girl duos preferred). Minimalism replaced decadence, and drum machines even supplanted drummers without ridicule.
The Kills tested these ideas on the duo's 2003 debut, KEEP ON YOUR MEAN SIDE, to considerable accolades, and the group's second album, NO WOW, further strips down their aesthetic. In a seductive drawl, Alison Mosshart (AKA VV) tells you how she's "lost a lot of cool," and how she "hates the way you love," over and over just to make sure you heard. Jamie Hince (AKA Hotel) concerns himself with spitting out trashy guitar riffs, knowing that more than four chords per song would be wasteful. These are repetitive, deliberate rock mantras designed for a kinetic stage show. Of course, the Kills' brand of Velvet Underground-meets-PJ Harvey rock is a far cry from VV's former work with punk icons Discount, but it's no less cool--it's just an updated kind of cool (see rulebook).Rolling Stone (No. 969, p.110) - 3 stars out of 5 - "[Compared to KEEP ON YOUR MEAN SIDE,] NO WOW is smaller, more focused, with less hip-shaking and more goth..."
Spin (p.92) - "[R]omantic defeatism can be charming if you infuse it with enough daydreaming, art-school blues." - Grade: B
Entertainment Weekly (No. 810, p.102) - "[The Kills] use overdriven riffs and ticky-tacky drum-machine beats to create a mood of sexual menace and druggy abandon..." - Grade: B
Uncut (p.96) - 3 stars out of 5 - "Grubby fun....There are exciting moments..."
Magnet (p.102) - "The Kills sound amped up, but they're not afraid to sedately wait out a lyric or riff until it implodes....NO WOW is mechanical yet sexy, and a soulful, grinding groove is key."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.106) - 4 stars out of 5 - "[I]ts claustrophobia is total, unique, spellbinding."