The Kills’ Alison Mosshart Is Fire And Power
Photo by Edouard Plongeon
Alison Mosshart of The Kills is always creating something, whether it’s painting in the middle of a crowded room or singing on another artist’s album. The fifth record from her British-American garage duo is nearly, almost, possibly done. Two years ago, vocalist Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince began work on a follow-up to 2011’s Blood Pressures. But other projects and interests slowed their momentum.
“We’re getting there. We’re almost done with the next one, I swear,” Mosshart promised during a recent interview in New York. “It should be coming out at some point. I think we only have a couple of months of work to do. That’s not to say when we will get those couple of months, but it’s coming along.”
Hince, from London, and Mosshart, a Florida native, usually take several years to make a record, often starting on both sides of the Atlantic, and this was no different. At long last, fans will have a chance to listen to some of The Kills’ new tunes this summer on a three-month cross-country tour, beginning July 25 in Seattle.
“We’ve been playing the same songs for four years [and] I’m ready for some new blood,” Mosshart says.
The duo wants the new album to be a departure from Blood Pressures, and while Mosshart has trouble explaining their new bearing, she says it begins with altered percussion, and the possible introduction of several session drummers, after years of pushing the boundaries of drum machines.
“The only thing to do at this point is to…have actual human people drumming,” she says. “Which is super exciting, except then Jamie is absolutely going to fuck it up beyond control and…it won’t sound human.”
Mosshart credits Hince for being the primary driver behind The Kills’ constant sonic growth. The British guitarist is always tinkering with how to alter the duo’s sound and create different textures and atmospheres, all while not changing the essence of the band.
She is pleased how, as diverse as their records have been, alternating between lo-fi, garage and blues rock—from Blood Pressures, to 2008’s Midnight Boom, 2005’s No Wow and 2003’s debut Keep on Your Mean Side—on stage, the duo’s songs blend together seamlessly.
“That’s how it’s supposed to be, but I’m allowed to be surprised by it because I’m so close to the process and what we went through for every single record,” she says. “Every time, you have to push yourself really far from your comfort zone, and somehow it snaps back to this place that makes perfect sense. It’s a process I couldn’t even write an essay about because it’s so confusing. It takes everything out of us.”
By late June, The Kills had completed 10 songs and were looking for two more. Mosshart acknowledges that she and Hince might still alter everything they have written beyond recognition in post-production, and she won’t settle on an aural depiction of the new songs. She is, however, able to compare them to a work of art, something she knows a little about.
“If it was a painting, it would be incredibly complex and it would take four years to paint,” she says. “I would stare at it in the museum and think, ‘I don’t know how they did that.’ I would be one inch away from it, wondering, ‘What brush? What paint? How did it happen? What is that?’”
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