Love and lust and sex and drugs and rock-and-roll seem to be on The Kills’ minds once again. “Blood Pressures” is the latest release from the duo, with a predominantly heavy mix of seething angular guitars and brooding percussion…
The Kills – Blood Pressures
Love and lust and sex and drugs and rock-and-roll seem to be on The Kills’ minds once again. “Blood Pressures” is the latest release from the duo, with a predominantly heavy mix of seething angular guitars, brooding percussion, and a number of other creative elements all belying the dark themes which carry the record.
The sexual tension is revealed from the get-go, with the minimal alley-rock of “Future Starts Slow”, reveling in fear and fraught ego (“it’s hard to be hard I guess/when you’re shaking like a dog”). It’s the theme that defines the entire album. Through the blues-based “Heart Is a Beating Drum”, the girl tells her boy to “send (his) love on a rampage/give her everything (he) got/and when (he) comes to hate her/show her more than a spark”.
The much-studied relationship between sex and death can be observed through the lyrical repetition of “Nail in My Coffin”. Time-hardened philosophy on the subject proposes that sex is both the denial and acceptance of our mortality. We know we are going to die – yet in many ways we actually live through the reality of our offspring. We have sex because we know that the grave awaits; we’re not a huge fan of the fact; we’re body compelled to do something about it. This theme is continued in “Damned If She Do”, where “she come alive when she dying” – an inexplicable paradox that somehow make sense in light of the above connection.
Though the music of the album is heavily blues-influenced, it does spread its wings at times. This can be heard through the Beatles-tinged 60s-pop of “Wild Charms”, the vulnerable piano waltz “The Last Goodbye” (“I won’t forget I swear – I have no regrets”), and the use of the REV gospel choir in “Satellite”, a track which rings up the tender relationship between Neo and Trinity of spiritual-nerd classic The Matrix (“operator, dial her back”).
The Kills self-created album art also points toward the band’s bleak optimism and mystery. As with the music and songwriting, you can only take what you want from it (which is also the rather grim view of the “dime-a-day love” presented through much of the record). “Blood Pressures” is a good example of post-modernism-via-indie-rock; it’s a bit of a grower in my current collection. I say take it in.
Theo Sangster, 17 April 2011.
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