From a scuzz ‘n’ roll accident just waiting to happen to strobing spotlights of hope – The Kills tango with James Berry down the Electric Ballroom.
22/02/2005
Relatively speaking it’s got to be up there with the first time Pink Floyd gave the national grid a coronary with a lights display to rival creation itself. Or the kind of set-up Jean Michelle Jarre probably has in his front room. Of course not literally, don’t be so bloody ridiculous. But as Hotel and VV pull silhouettes that could walk away with distinctions from the Mick Jagger Institute For The Bendy, in front of spiraling, strobing spotlights that burst defiantly through the darkness, ‘No Wow’ jerks awake like distorted clockwork grinding away the rust of inactivity and things are instantly a world away from the sight of two rock ‘n’ roll vagrants wearing last week’s t-shirts, caught in the lo-watt headlights of their edgy debut performances.
They gyrate. They judder. They twist. As they always did, but now with the air of veterans of excess. Hotel, in a light brown (nee beige) sweater over black shirt and below a chisled visage, is the gentleman host with the Tourette shakes who spills the appetizer down your girlfriend’s cleavage and smiles a little too knowingly. VV, striking mighty poses in her suit jacket/t-shirt/denim combo, face moulded with cold desire, is like Kate Moss and Bobby Gillespie in the same skin. They’re the kind of pair whose electricity, in spite of the inherent styling, makes you feel like your heart is beating only because of them.
They’ve gone from apparent embryonic scuzz ‘n’ roll accident, all the way to this. An actual performance. Which might not seem all that far, in fact it might seem like a move in the wrong direction regardless of how far. But not tonight. The more confident and choreographed it gets – Hotel barking VV’s lyrics into the middle-distance as he battles a fevered spirit with his axe, flipping their microphones around to gristle their way through ‘I Hate The Way You Love Pt II’ locked onto each others’ burning gazes, VV vertically lolling on a flight-case riser, Hotel mimicking a particularly animal advance with his guitar as trusty phallus – the more they seem like a pair aware of their limits, and aware that they’re much further than most presume.
Relevant sites:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5BYuBzqmTXwUDw2rYkwExr
James Berry for Crud Magazine 2004©