Autopsy Of The Pops

Alison Mosshart bites her lips, rolls her eyes and fixes me with an angry glare. Who can blame her? I’ve just dropped an M bomb – ‘M’ being Kate Moss, the supermodel girlfriend of Mosshart’s Kills partner Jamie Hince.

“It’s something I hate talking about,” she says. “I haven’t noticed it helping our fanbase in any way. We’re still playing the same venues we used to. Career-wise, I don’t see any proof of that kind of thing helping anyone. Everybody likes to think it does. But I haven’t seen any evidence of it whatsoever.”
She’s far happier discussing The Kills’ glittering, beat-driven new record Midnight Boom. Recorded during an 18 month sojourn in the American midwest, the album pushed Mosshart and Hince to the brink – both creatively and materially (at one stage they nearly ran out of cash).
“About eight months in, we had that moment of complete doubt,” she recalls. “We felt like we weren’t making anything good. But that’s part of the process of making a record. Your brain goes funny – your mind plays tricks and makes you feel weird. You lose it a little bit.”
To regain some sanity, Mosshart and Hince booked a holiday in Mexico – bang in the middle of hurricane season.
“We wondered why it was so cheap!” she laughs. “The whole town was boarded up. We stayed in this house looking out over the bay – for some reason the rain never blew in. You could watch the hurricane but hardly feel it. It was really bizarre. I’m from Florida and I’ve lived through a lot of hurricanes and it’s not fun. But this was really cool – like going to see a hurricane in a cinema.”
From this period of self-absorption, doubt and hurricane was born The Kills’ most progressive LP to date. That wasn’t an accident – going into the studio, the duo were determined, says Mosshart, to slough off their retro sounds and write something more contemporary.
“We wanted to do something modern. We’ve never done that. We’re obsessed with old gear and old ways of doing things. And we still are. I have to say it wasn’t fun recording on a computer. It’s a nightmare. I hate it. I doubt we’ll do it again. You have to rely on someone else. I can use a tape machine, but a computer is really annoying.”
Hince and Mosshart have a weird dynamic. The former’s relationship with Moss notwithstanding, The Kills still live out of one another’s pockets. They share the same crumbling converted squat in south London and see each other practically every day.
“Sometimes we go on vacation from one another,” Alison laughs, “but we still call each other all the time!”