The Kills Black Rooster EP Dim Mak brought to you by Steve May The Kills are Brits, but like a lot their kin folk of the past and present and no doubt future, they sing with American accents. Yeah, it’d be silly if it were the reverse – Americans other than the Ramones or maybe Green Day faking cockney accents – but since they’re British and the Beatles and Stones did it, they get a Get Out of Jail Free pass. The American fixation goes far beyond the singing. The main influences here, approximately Sleater Kinney, Royal Trux, and the Velvet Underground, not necessarily in that order, are all Yankee. The he-said, she-said vocal exchanges on the first two tracks, "Cat Claw" and "Black Rooster," the former complete with she-singer VV throwing around (finger quotes) "sexy," "stylish" terms like "Sugar" (i.e. "C’mon, Sugar," like a prostitute or a waitress at truck stop in Wheeling, West Virginia would say) are too self-consciously Yankee for their own good, kind of like the accents, but they’re also kind of fun and yes sexy, and the word on the street is, that’s what music’s supposed to be about. Plus the Kills are British, so we’ll leave them alone, "Sugar." The songs – and there are only four on this EP, not including the utterly disturbing "Gum" afterward – aren’t fabulous, but they’re street smart and confident enough in themselves to be somewhat compelling, kind of like a smarter-than-her-job prostitute character in a movie. (Someone who might turn the trick, using terms like, "Sugar" where appropriate, then go home and read Kant or Nietzsche.) The sound geeks out there, in their Bad Wizard T-shirts, will be sucked in and swallowed whole by slinger and he-singer Hotel’s guitar tone: alternately warm and chunky and fuzzy and expertly pissed off and dissonant and always fabulous, unlike the songs. The last non-"Gum" track, a balls-out live take on Captain Beefheart’s "Dropout Boogie," lets the Bloke stretch out and, how did Spinal Tap say it?, rawk and rawl. It’s like he doesn’t have to use his hands on the guitar: all he has to do is think. Metric Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? Goldfrapp Black Cherry Fleetwood Mac Say You Will DJ Dara Breakbeat Science Exercise 01 The 88 Kind of Light The Kills Black Rooster EP The Libertines Up the Bracket Jettatura Squadra Fantasma Tone Ambient Metals The Streets Original Pirate Material Grand Buffet Cigarette Beach Roni Size Touching Down Rolling Stones 40 Licks Brendan Benson Lapalco Anticon Music for the Advancement of Hip-Hop copyright © 2000-2005 - www.stellargirl.com