The Kills - An interview

Watching The Kills perform it's hard not to be consumed by the raw power
and sexual attitude on display. Since I first saw them live in Washington D.C. in 2003 I've been captivated by them, intrigued by what makes them tick. They prefer to keep the media at arms length but when they played in Brighton recently, I managed to persuade them to talk to me. Here are the highlights..

It's been a long time coming...

On the music press....

"I think it’s inevitable that we'll be compared with bands like The White Stripes but I don’t want to be affiliated with anybody really. Media jumps on things so quickly now that things get labelled before they’ve even had a chance for people to hear them. It’s the nature of music press. People always want to hear something new. Music papers seem to want to create a new scene every week” - Hotel

“We were always really paranoid and protective of our band. We felt those things would destroy our band before it could even really start.” - Hotel

On their sense of themselves...

“There’s something at the core of it that’s beyond music. We started off as two introverted people that found each other living parallel lives 4,000 miles away. We were both making short films for no-one to watch, making tapes for no-one to listen to and writing literature for no-one to read. It became a little two-person art group. We were socialising. It was fun.” - Hotel

“When I was a kid I lived in the middle of nowhere and there wasn’t tonnes of hype around bands; it was a struggle to find them and when you found them they were your band and it was your life and you were so happy and inspired. I want to inspire people that way.” VV

On performing.....

“It’s my favourite part. It’s the scariest part. It’s the most interesting part. It’s just a moment you can’t replicate. If you’re there, you’re there and if you miss it...... it’s gone.” - VV

“When we go on stage I always feel like it’s us against the world.” - Hotel

“A good show is being totally honest. You reach that dream state of losing yourself and you can’t remember it.” - VV

On their new album, No Wow....

“We’ve tried to be even more deconstructive, to get to the skin and bones of it.” - VV

“I think it’s just as important what you leave off a record as what you add to it.” - Hotel

“I like music to mean something. I don’t care if I know what it means but I want it to have an impact in people’s hearts and in their heads, not just in their feet and not just intellectually.”
- Hotel

On their relationship....

“We decided that art and music were the most important things to us, in an almost fascistic way. We were prepared to ruin our lives to do it. When two people like that get together you dispose of etiquette, manners and politeness and things like that. It’s totally beyond friendship.” - Hotel

“It’s the creative thing that keeps us together. We’ve become quite volatile with each other and we fight because of that.” - Hotel

“We’re not trying to preserve our friendship, we’re trying to preserve our art.” - Hotel

“She’s like another part of me. When I look at her on stage it’s like looking at another part of me. I can’t ever step out of it. I feel lost.” - Hotel

“The Kills is our life.” - VV

On success....

“We want to leave a mark. We want to change something. Selling loads of records is for someone else.” VV

“You can’t really avoid [the need to sell records] but I’d like it to be a symptom of what we’re doing, not a reason for doing it.” - Hotel