From the opening rhythm and blues barrage of Future Starts Slow, it's pretty damn apparent that VV and Hotel have slumped back onto their Mean Side, as they,
The Kills, drawl lyrics of blowing all that's left in their right minds reminiscent of Fried My Little Brains all over salacious and slinky audio backdrop. Mosshart's once-primordial growl has matured into a bona fide Marianne Faithfull-esque bawl, before the fairground rolls into town with the sound of pawnshop six strings rocking and rolling to the tune of Satellite. Heart Is A Beating Drum is the aural equivalent of shaving with a rusty razor blade, Hince's guitars lurking in fuzzy bottom end frequencies, murky doldrums where they rampage with racy drum patterns, whilst Nail In My Coffin takes that arrantly pervasive Fix Up, Look Sharp kickdrum thunder and marries it with Mosshart's suitably savage, weathered and worn howl. Wild Charms is something of an anomaly, Hince crooning vulnerably as if emulating
Alex Turner's subdued side recently immortalised in Submarine EP, before DNA lumbers into the melée, demonstrating that a certain quantity of Jack White's nucleic acids have seeped into The Kills' genetic complexion. Yet the oh-so-hip-they'll-be-requiring-Acetabular-cups-implanted-sharpish duo illustrate that they're at their most winsome when they tone down the leather garb and barb and hike up the emotivity as on the sullen Baby Says and bedraggled closer Pots And Pans that sounds a little like Seasick Steve snapping away those age-old rusty strands on his Three-String Trance Wonder, the world subsequently imploding. The Last Goodbye meanwhile is all sorts of Piaf theatricality over plodding piano drafted in from sepia portraits saddened over centuries, before the sultry stomp of Damned If She Do gets pulses throbbing again. Rip the heart out of Mosshart and it'll keep pulsating away, seeping seething vitriol it seems...
