KILLING ME SOFTLY
The Kills on avoiding cliches and how hard it is to write from the heart.
For a band that usuallyy deals in rock’n’roll, the big emotional reveal isn’t easy. Here, the Kills discuss avoiding cliches and how hard it is to write from the heart. By Noelle Faulkner. Styledy byy Mary Fellowes. Photographed by Mark Squires.
“ALISON IS VERY PROLIFIC. IF WE HAVE A MONTH OFF, SHE’LL WRITE 25 SONGS WHILE I’LL WRITE THREE”
There’s something Amy Winehouse once said that has been echoing in my head recently. It’s from an interview she gave with the LA Times where she is musing on the state of popular music. “So much pop these days is like: ‘What can you do for me? I don’t need you. You don’t know me,’” she said. “Back in the 60s it really was like: ‘I don’t care if you love me, I’m gonna lay down and die for you, because I’m in love with you.’”
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Winehouse’s brave expression of fragility with every Bitch Better Have My Money and Flawless (Remix) that hits my cochlea. As fashion’s idea of power, gender and strength changes, or rather, softens, pop music somehow stays the same. Sure, that self-assured diva confidence most definitely has a place, and these feminist anthems we drink up as prescription, but too much and the intended sentiment feels more and more disconnected from reality. On the f lipside, rock’n’roll, traditionally one of the most hedonistic, nofucks- given, clichefilled genres of music, is seeing a shift in the opposite direction. Take the most recent releases from on-therise bands like Savages, Saint Laurent punk muses White Lung and emerging local indie outfit Camp Cope, for example – these are bands making loud music that simmers with emotions; power through fragility. In other words, human nature. Somehow, hedonism in rock music has become trite, and emotional exposure, never sexier.
Nashville-via-London duo the Kills aren’t known for dealing in vulnerabilities. The band’s signature sound is a cold, anxious energy, with stomping, drum machine rhythms and jerky, guitar riffs wrapped in ballsy bravado. Front woman Alison Mosshart’s growl puts up a don’t-mess-with-me front and guitarist Jamie Hince, known by most as the paparazzi-stalked spouse of Kate Moss, is the supremely private, cool and collected ying to Mosshart’s snarling, sexy yang. In their 15-plus years, the Kills’ sentiment has always been shrouded in ambiguity and metaphor – not the type of music that complements teardrops in a whiskey glass. Until now. “It’s hard to say [if it was intentional] because it was happening in the writing so much,” Mosshart says about the honest, emotional sentiment behind Ash & Ice, the Kills’ new album and their most honest to-date. “We really had to push an uncomfortable side of ourselves. We talked a lot about it and worked hard on that ‘what is the most straightforward way of saying exactly how we feel about this? Or, what’s happening?’” Well, a lot has happened in the five years since the band’s last record. Between touring, Mosshart launched an art career and dropped a new album with the Dead Weather (her collaboration with Jack White), and a deep bone infection almost rendered Hince fingerless, putting his musical career in jeopardy. “I had my hand all bandaged up and I couldn’t move it,” he says, revealing that, at one point, that he was ready to accept fate as “one-handed studio guy” and never grip a guitar again. “I watched a documentary about the guitar player Les Paul, and there was a moment where he had a car crash and he thought he’d never play again. It made him rethink everything and gave him a mental determination that he wouldn’t have had without the accident. It was suddenly like everything disappeared and he was speaking to me from the TV,” he recalls. “All these coincidences conspire to hit you in the face and you realise that everything points to something positive.”
Five operations – including a tendon transplant – later, and Hince’s silver lining came in the form of a new outlook and an appreciation for digital music programs, both of which shaped the new album. Inspired, he jumped aboard the Trans- Siberian Express, the famed Russian train route that spans several time zones and a few thousand kilometres, to write. “There are a lot of things about Russian culture, art, music, photography and literature that I’m love with,” he says. “I thought it would be the perfect environment to be on my own and start on a blank page for this record. Trains have featured so much in literature and rock’n’roll, and they can be a crazy metaphor for so many things. I started thinking about a lot of those things after the trip.” Of course, there is a pink elephant here and it’s that of his rumoured marital troubles with Moss.
The dichotomy between Hince and Mosshart is what makes this band so dynamic. The long-legged blonde is the epitome of the rock’n’roll, vixen, possessing an unbreakable, sultry prowl, and oozing power. “Alison is very impatient and prolific,” the charismatic guitarist says of the duo’s polar creative processes. “If we have a month off, she’ll write 25 songs, whereas I will write three and be tortured by all of them,” he adds with a laugh. “Alison’s songs are an explosion of how she feels at a certain moment. Some of them make you want to cry, some are just throwaways. She is not afraid of giving everything that comes
out of her. I can’t do that … Not everything I do is for the public. Maybe that’s a comment on the way our lives are, but I am really conscious of it.”
It’s a comfort that a woman with this level of command is just as fragile as the rest of us and going off the sheer expressive output that Mosshart puts into the world, via the Kills, the Dead Weather and her visual art, it’s a wonder her cup doesn’t runneth over. “Seriously, I think it does,” she says, laughing. “I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have these outlets – probably just explode.”
Last year, the Florida-born musician had her first exhibition of the works she ferociously paints wherever she goes, revealing much more than her music ever has. “It definitely felt weird at first. I couldn’t understand why anyone needs my diary entries in their house,” she says, laughing. “[The art] is so personal to me; it was all made during very real situations, so when I see those pictures, I remember exactly where I was and what I was thinking and why I painted it. It’s not like a record where there’s a ton of copies. So when someone buys something, it makes me so proud that they want to look at it every day. It’s insanely meaningful to me.” Does showing her art correlate to her newfound comfort in putting emotions out there on a record? Perhaps.
It’s easy to understand the battle in which the duo has to find sanctuary, particularly Hince, and the hesitation to be transparent with emotions. “We’re very private people who don’t like our business [being] out there. So while we’re not putting names in, we’re trying to convey how we really feel or felt. Chances are someone else is feeling that, too,” says Mosshart. “My favourite kinds of songs are the ones where I think that person is singing about my life. Every band wants to do that, but it’s really hard to do. It’s so much easier to hide behind a ton of metaphors and vague, cool words.”
Hince agrees: “I don’t really like to give anything away, but this time around, the lyric was so important to me.” He adds, “Rock’n’roll cliches just don’t speak to anyone in 2016, so we were desperate not to do that.” The Kills will tour Australia in July. Ash & Ice is out June 3 (Domino Records).