I spent an insomnia riddled night reverberating in my ever increasing love for The Kills. Alison Mosshart's winning in the girl crush stakes at the moment; I'm lusting after that mane of hair, grunge style and gravelly voice like nothing else! If you haven't heard of The Kills, though with Jamie Hince's recent wedding to Kate Moss I imagine you have, check them out! Probably one of the realist bands around. To me they are: She & Him turned dark, a poster band injecting the 80s rock god status back into the music industry, heavy guitars and drums, gorgeous lyrics and Alison Mosshart's siren song voice. All this amalgamates together to create a intoxicatingly gorgeous underworld lullaby. What comes to mind when I watch The Kills music videos is this intertwining of the sinister yet potent psychedelic movie Natural Born Killers and the drug addled, beauty soaked stream of consciousness of Edie Sedgwick in the Ciao Manhattan tapes. Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart possess an electric connection, perhaps most evident when Jamie moves towards Alison like she's this magnetic force, then they jerk apart like polar opposites. SHEER LOVE. This is the same electrifying rollercoaster love Mallory and Mickey Knox share in Natural Born Killers, with their sick, damaged brutality forming an inherent bond between them, their love growing stronger as their crime rates rise. Together they feel they can conquer the world, a feeling that comes into play in The Kills 'Future Starts Slow' video which begins with a kiss and intersperses shots of Jamie and Alison walking through destitute landscapes as if they are the only people in the world. Their overbearing, almost suffocating, but ultimately intoxicating lyrics "If I ever give you up my heart would surely fail" could have soundtracked Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson's imposing love. The Kills independence and comfortableness with one another is emphasised in 'Satellite' whilst violence and the damage a couple can do to each other under the guise of love underlines 'The Last Day of Magic' both of which paralleling subjects played out in Natural Born Killers. 'My little tornado. My little hurricane oh"Alison Mosshart sings, akin to Mallory and Mickey tearing violence and devastation across Americana.
In some respect, the statement Natural Born Killers makes about the power of the media is also emphasised through Jamie Hince's rise of media popularity since his relationship with Kate Moss. Meanwhile, the tragic beauty of Edie Sedgwick's Ciao Manhattan Tapes, the drug addled memories and the switch from monochrome to vibrant colour filters is suggested through the vintage feeling video for The Kills 'Cheap and Cheerful' and the ode to narcotics and illegal substances 'Black Balloon.' Together, the innocence and fragility of Edie Sedgwick, her ability to remain vivacious yet distanced, her live in the moment think later attitude is tied together with the crudeness, yet entrancing relationship of Mallory and Mickey Knox in Natural Born Killers, to capture the mood and look of The Kills videos. In all three mediums, the characters are doing their own thing, wholly independent yet wholly dependent on someone or in Edie's case something else. It is this on camera magnetic vibe that makes Jamie and Alison so enchanting to watch, to such a degree it is almost impossible to stop. Their music sucks you in into a vortex. Alison Mosshart's voice drawing you in like Ursula's vocal spell in The Little Mermaid. Yet, their videos all possess a somewhat sinister underline, their lyrics malleable to interpretation, they are a very clever band. Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart could be Mallory and Mickey, they could be Edie, or they could be the biggest rockstars around.
