I’m a cynic. Hype bugs me. You go to a show, you see a band that is supposed to have cured cancer with its eyeballs or something, and you look around at all the trendies that are drooling merch money and overpriced domestic beer, frothing excitedly, and you look up onstage and think, “Yeah, s’allright. *shrug*”.

But The Kills live? FUCK YEAH.

Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince brought with ’em to the Commodore a rather diva-like set up. The side-room sound board wasn’t, apparently, good enough, so they set up their own at centre-back of the venue. They had two light operators stand in the front row, amidst the mellee of bodies, directing floods on the band’s faces….FOR THE WHOLE SHOW. They had two operators STANDING ON STAGE swinging huge backlights. They made photogs snap ’em from the back of the room, not at the front.

But that’s okay. Because the Kills aren’t divas. They’re rockstars. Proper ones.

I would have licked boots to hold a spotlight on the backcombed black-haired bombshell Mosshart, and I would gladly drape an fashionably tailored jacket on the back of Hince. The Kills are two – not four, not five – people on stage who make big noise. They work hard, so you can rock out.

Evidence of awesome? I mean, besides the general crunchy bluesypunkyaltrockness of the whole thing? The way Alison arched her back and and leaned against the speakers, stage left. The way she thrashed her mane and swung her hips. The way she strutted over to Jamie, smiling, teasing, when he messed up the words in “Satellite”. The way. She. Kept. Moving. Then there’s that bellow, that voice. Alison is fire.

And Jamie? Staring down the audience like a king overseeing a court, curling a fist and thwacking the body of his guitar or pointing it like a gun. Thanking their openers The Entrance Band and Cold Cave (yay for 80s keyboard nihilism! Met Wesley Eisold after the gig, who hugged me and thanked me for coming) for “letting us in to be a part of their extended family.” Looking fabulously stylish (a man so COOL at the end of the show that he has to put ON a new jacket for the encores) whilst pedal-hopping and playing point-counterpoint to Alison’s voice. There was also the brill sideways shuffle he did during “Tape Song”…

Highlights of sound? The dirty, filthysexy threepack of “U R a Fever”, “DNA” and “Sattelite” and the soaring “Last Goodbye” in the encores. (Impressive that a song that bugs the hell out of me on the album sounds so grand and fitting and gorgeous live). Then it all came to a head with “Fried My Little Brains”…which, like, so totally did.

So…The Kills…pretty incendiary. Hype = lived up to. \m/

Alison photos by Kris Krüg, staticphotography.com/kriskrug.com