ABC, Glasgow
It's a happy coincidence that the Kills have added more substance to their surfeit of style just as Jamie Hince's imminent marriage to Kate Moss raises the band's celebrity stock to potentially bankable levels. It doesn't exactly seem to be Heat readers who have flocked to one of their biggest headline shows to date, but the transatlantic boy-girl duo do seem to be reaching a new audience with their fourth album, Blood Pressures, which boasts better melodies and a broader emotional range than we've heard yet from the purveyors of trashy, battery-acid blues.
Dressed in uniform black, English guitarist Hince and American vocalist Alison Mosshart's hour-long turn parades a leaner, meaner, louder Kills. Staying a two-piece continues to limit their sound, yet there's a certain raw spareness to their straight-faced take on ne'er-do-well rock'n'roll that keeps them just the right side of ridiculous.
Hince's raggedy guitar-playing mixes invention and classicism – creeping reggae stomp Satellite starts with blasts of organ-like noise and ends with him hammering his instrument with his fist, while the magnificent Baby Says channels serpentine Gimme Shelter Keef-isms. Mosshart's voice and stagecraft feel sharpened by a two-album stint fronting Jack White's the Dead Weather.
Much as few people can feel sorry for a young miscreant in the crowd as he's booed and ejected after being singled out by a surly Hince for throwing a pint stagewards – "come up here, I'll give you a guitar and you can try entertaining people" – it sours the mood before The Last Goodbye, possibly the Kills' best song. A Phil Spector-ish reverby piano ballad that sees a kohl-eyed Mosshart mourn a "half-hearted love" through her tangle of jet-black hair, it's the pair's lightest touch that lands the heaviest.