I’m back from a good day of work
and dinner out with a friend. Sheila is sleeping off a visit to the dentist and
I’m making her soup, which doesn’t sound as dinner out, but maybe just what you
need after a trip to the dentist.
Disc 795 is….No Wow
Artist: The Kills
Year of Release: 2005
What’s up with the Cover? Alison Mosshart plays peek-a-boo
with a flash card and Jamie Hince…crumples money? That’s my best guess as to
what he’s doing. I can’t really tell, and I can’t ask Alison Mosshart to
explain it to me since she’s got her eyes covered with a sign and wouldn’t be
able to see. Regardless, this cover has no ‘wow’ factor.
How I Came To Know It: Once I discovered the Kills back
in 2011 I went on a record buying binge. “No Wow” and “Midnight Boom” were the
last two albums I bought.
How It Stacks Up: I have four Kills albums, which I
believe is all of them. Of the four, I must reluctantly put “No Wow” at the
bottom of the list, in fourth place.
Ratings: 3 stars
“No Wow” is the Kills’
second album, and while it has their signature garage band sound it doesn’t
have the same magic as the two previous albums I’ve reviewed (2003’s “Keep on
Your Mean Side” and 2011’s “Blood Pressures”).
The album starts with a bang.
“No Wow/Telephone Radio Germany” jumps
on you early with a groovy beat that is quickly cut by Alison Mosshart’s dirty
punk/rock voice and then cut again when the fuzz guitar riff breaks into the
mix. “No Wow…” is a classic Kills
song, building up isolated beats in thick slabs and layering in guitar chords
into a song that inexorably builds until it suddenly ends, leaving you to wonder
what the hell it was all about.
Don’t worry your pretty
little head about what these songs are about. You could try to decipher the
lyrics but I feel like words are secondary for these guys. Words are there to
evoke flashes of imagery. Like on “Love
is a Deserter” where Mosshart sings “get
the guns out/your love is a deserter” over and over again. It is vaguely
about betrayal, but the circumstances are never fully described and who cares –
it has a great vibe.
Unfortunately, the rest of
the album doesn’t hold up to the first two tracks. Then you’re left with songs
about a shitty road (“Dead Road 7”)
and what I think is a song about scoring drugs (“The Good Ones”).
These songs have a
restlessness about them that is ably fueled by Mosshart’s delivery. As a
vocalist, Mosshart alternates between sounding angry, frustrated or just plain
strung out. Whatever emotion she’s spitting out, there is a dangerous element
to her voice that is what rock and roll is all about when it’s done right. The half-baked
reverb blues riffs that accompany her work well, although at times they get a
bit derivative. “The Good Ones”
sounds a bit too much like BTO’s “Takin’
Care of Business” for me to enjoy it, for example.
The production on “No Wow”
strives for a garage band roughness and for the most part it works, but there
are times, like at the end of “No
Wow/Telephone Radio Germany” where the song trails off into strange samples
and noises. This seems to be without purpose beyond demonstrating an ‘unfinished’
sound. My advice would have been to instead just finish it, but I guess at some
level that’s a betrayal of the punk aesthetic they are going for.
I’ve mentioned it before,
but it bears repeating how much the Kills music is about the beat. It can be
delivered vocally, by guitar or through the traditional drum kit, but the sound
is very much about taking different rhythms and pulling them together in
creative ways. “At the Back of the Shell”
is a good example, rat-a-tat-tatting its way through a song that isn’t terribly
complicated, but dresses up well. Mosshart’s impeccable timing is key to the
success of every track, and without her these songs would quickly fall apart.
“Rodeo Town” feels like a break up song if breaking up was like some
kind of drunken Vegas shoot out. The record is full of the hint of unhealthy
relationships and recriminations, empty and otherwise. Unlike a lot of the
songs it has more than a hint of both melody and story and I appreciated both.
In fact, there are lots of
things to recommend “No Wow” and despite being my least favourite Kills album,
it is still a good time. You can’t get too mad when the biggest problem about a
record is the band made three better ones.
Best
tracks: No Wow/Telephone Radio Germany, Love is a
Deserter, Rodeo Town
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