2.5 stars (out of 4)
The Kills write simple songs with lots of attitude, the kind that blows smoke in your face and stubs out cigarettes in your chest. Dirt, sleaze, swagger – the duo delivered on three studio albums between 2003 and '08 blending blues grind, drum-machine beats and spectral vocals that sounded like a visitation from Sister Midnight.
On “Blood Pressures” (Domino), the fourth studio album from singer Alison Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince, the duo adds a few twists to the formula. Mosshart, who moonlighted recently in Jack White’s Dead Weather, is a more versatile singer than ever. She puts a touch of Peggy Lee smolder into “The Heart is a Beating Drum,” and does a pretty good impression of a torch singer on “The Last Goodbye,” pouring out her world-weariness over a wan piano. Even Hince gets into the spirit of boundary-pushing with his lead-vocal turn on a wobbly psychedelic ballad, “Wild Charms.”
Otherwise, it’s the Kills putting more of a pop gleam on their guitar-drums grime. The melodies are more pronounced, the lyrics more carefully enunciated. “Baby Says” tries to have it both ways, a straight-up, almost pretty pop song underpinned by a guitar that sounds like it was recorded on a defective cassette tape. But the tamer approach isn’t entirely successful and the album runs out of steam in its second half. It leaves “Blood Pressures” sounding like a more polite version of the Kills.
greg@gregkot.com