Album Review: The Kills - Ash & Ice

Five years on from Blood Pressures, the gestation of The Kills fifth album has been a slow one.

Ash & Ice is a stalled three-year project delayed by guitarist James Hince's hand requiring six operations, while Alison Mosshart stockpiled roughly 120 pieces for the opening of her first painting exhibition. Although Mosshart and Hince often write quickly, the overall process was further dragged out by the transfer of drafts of each other's parts across the Atlantic, ultimately creating a dense work that Mosshart has described as "incredibly complex" and if it were a painting "it would be one that looked like it had been painted over and over and over and over".

Many of The Kills' best songs have been among their simplest — the ruthlessly economical Tape Song or the rugged minimalism of No Wow for example. Ironically, the album opens with Doing It To Death, which succinctly captures the fatigue and slow, almost unconscious damage amassed from compulsive behaviour. Heart Of A Dog is The Kills' music in its purest form — direct, concise and brutally effective. But from Bitter Fruit onward the record dwindles into ever clunkier, ever more tired sounding songwriting. Subdued tracks like Echo Home suggest The Kills may be trying to express a newfound maturity, but without the primal urgency of old — the results are nowhere near as engaging. Ash & Ice lacks spontaneity and fails to play to The Kills' strengths.