Track Listing

1. No Wow
2. Love Is A Deserter
3. Dead Road 7
4. The Good Ones
5. I Hate The Way You Love
6. I Hate The Way You Love Part 2
7. At The Back Of The Shell
8. Sweet Cloud
9. Rodeo Town
10. Murdermile
11. Ticket Man

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9071 in Music
• Released on: 2005-02-21
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: Explicit Lyrics

Amazon.co.uk Review
Born out of a transatlantic writing partnership that saw Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince – aka VV and Hotel – exchange tapes via airmail, it perhaps makes sense that The Kills should be a thing of meticulous care and economy. Second album No Wow is perhaps even more stripped and lean than its predecessor, 2003's Keep On Your Mean Side, peeling back the skin on tracks like "Dead Road 7" and "At The Back Of The Shell" to reveal little more than the propulsive hiss of a drum machine, the looming, shark-like presence of Hotel's fuzzed-out guitar, and the pair's drawled, alley-cat vocals. Sonically, there's clear comparisons to be drawn to PJ Harvey's 2004 album, Uh Huh Her: both trawl through the waters of doomed romance and pitch-black blues, both are aware that sometimes less is more. And although some rock fans may prefer a little more meat on their musical bones, as a daring experiment to strip the genre down to its bleached skeleton, No Wow succeeds just fine. --Louis Pattison

CD Description
'No Wow' is the second album from London based duo The Kills. Recorded in just three months in the sleepy town of Benton Harbour, Michigan, the album sees the band continue with the stripped back indie rock sound of their acclaimed debut 'Keep On Your Mean Side', taking inspiration from their quickrise into the media spotlight throughout 2003 and 2004.

Customer Reviews

The Very Good Ones
First things first, please, please, please ignore any comparisons of this band to the White Stripes, they're not lazy comparisons, they're just wrong. I'm a huge fan of the Stripes for their individuality, and that's perhaps the only similarity between these bands. Apart from that, they're not at all alike. The Kills are fantastic because of their simplicity. Whilst the modern Indie scene is overrun by style and lacking in substance, drowning in image, narrative, souless solos and pointless recycling of music, the Kills ride high above all of this.

Their music is condensed yet sparse, some recorded on eight-track, some recorded on two-track. The drum beats are often repetitive stacattos, the guitar, sometimes so raw and primal as to be pure noise, and the vocals, are spiteful, viscious but sexy.

The album opens with 'No Wow', an attack on the unispiring and unoriginal media that we have nowadays, a stuttering skipping drum beat, along with nasty guitar and vocals, builds to a fantastic crescendo. The closer 'Ticket Man', a simple plonking piano piece, stands as a rant against the mess of modernity. Everything else in between contains hissing, thundering drum beats, dual vocals, and distorted messed-up guitar. The second half of the album suffers from not quite reaching the height of the first, but it's all good. Play it loud, and smile when the guitar on 'I Hate The Way You Love' rips through your speakers.

If you like this, then also get their debut album, it's even better. Ultimately, if you don't get this album, read an interview with the band, or see them live. If you still don't get them, head down to the Top 50 section in Woolworths.

Makes The Strokes sound like Muse
I was very very anxious when this album came out. Their first album, Keep on your Mean Side, was easily the best debut of 2003, an album that, throughout the last year and a half, had never strayed too far away from stereo. I'd have walked barefoot through hell for these two.

My expectations were raised further by a review in the NME which gave the album 5/10, seemingly because it wasn't "commercial" enough -- fantastic I thought.

And disappointed I was not. The Kills have perfected the art of stripping a mixture of blues, post-punk and garage rock down its bare, blissful essentials. The opener, No Wow, is a barren desert of sound, populated only by repeated phrases and guitar riffs, and an endlessly chattering drum machine. Dead Road 7 is a bizarre start-stop slab of fuzzy blues rock, the song hangs permanently on the edge of something, but tantalisingly never quite gets there.

Perhaps the highlight of the album is Rodeo Town, somewhat of a departure for the duo, similar to Wait on Keep on Your Mean Side, a bubbling stew of ambiguous American passion, with a pinch of Sonic Youth and the Velvet Underground.

It is denser, darker and perhaps more difficult than Keep on Your Mean side, the album which I recommend starting with if your new to this band, but shares much of the same hollow darkness, and moments of extreme brilliance.

I cannot describe just how much you need this band in your life right now.

Great entertainment
Get over White Stripes comparisons, the nearest comparison is PJ Harvey. So, if you like the more upbeat PJ Harvey, like me then you will love this album (and their previous album).