The Kills Issue #35

Frontwoman Alison Mosshart converts stage fright into a beautiful situation

By Lynn Jarvis
Published: March 1st, 2008 | 2:54pm

“I hate the whole ring tone, commercial thing,” says Jamie Hince, guitarist for London duo the Kills. “I think it’s just killing music.” Needless to say, unlike many of their indie brethren, the Kills won’t be signing any distribution deals with cell phone companies or appearing in car ads anytime soon.

Kills singer-guitarist Alison Mosshart agrees. “I have friends who’ve done vodka commercials, and while I don’t want to judge anyone, it just seems so ugly,” she says. “It’s tough, though — you have to tour nonstop for two years if you want to sell records these days, and that’s expensive and hard. And the worst part of it is, kids these days don’t seem to notice or care if a band sells their music. It’s totally different from when I was a kid and it would be the end of the world if I heard a Fugazi song in an ad.”

This push and pull between nostalgia and modern thinking is evident in the band’s third album, Midnight Boom (Domino). It’s populated with songs like “The Way New York Used to Be,” a stream-of-consciousness track about longing for the pre-gentrification days of smoky bars and affordable lofts; at the same time, the album has fresh, modern production, courtesy of Spank Rock producer Alex Epton. The one constant between this record and the band’s previous effort, 2005’s No Wow, is the band’s recording studio, the Key Club, which is located in a tiny Midwestern hamlet called Benton Harbor, Michigan.

“We tried to record in Los Angeles, but quickly realized it wasn’t for us,” Hince says. “We went back to Benton Harbor, and it was just a much better environment.” Mosshart agrees. “It’s a beautiful place with really great energy,” she says. “We weren’t running in to people we knew and there were no distractions, so we had the opportunity to focus on being really creative.”

Mosshart and Hince’s creativity extends beyond the music on their records. “We wrote maybe three albums’ worth of material in the two years between No Wow and Midnight Boom,” Mosshart says. “We wrote a bunch of folksier, bluesier stuff that didn’t end up on this album. I also worked on some art exhibits.” Hince has been doing some DJing and appearing in tabloids as model Kate Moss’ significant other.

Despite a little newfound fame and reputation as a dynamic live band, Mosshart is still not entirely comfortable performing in front of an audience. “I’m totally motivated by fear,” she says. “After all these years, I’m still not used to it. I guess it’s easier to be complacent if you’re in a bigger band, but when it’s just two of you, everything is magnified. But I find that when the music starts happening, I can take the panic and make it something beautiful.”