Sound Advice: The Kills to Command the Bogart's Stage Later this Month

This story is featured in CityBeat’s Feb. 7 print edition.

Cult favorite duo The Kills bring their gutter glam punk to command the Bogart’s stage in February.

The band’s stylized but gritty explorations of minimalism are all studies in attitude and mood with explosive vocalist (and sometimes guitarist) Alison Mosshart blending effortlessly with guitarist/vocalist Jamie Hince’s melody and oversaturated groove, set overtop a programmed drum machine beat.

Mosshart and Hence met in the year 2000 while Mosshart’s former band Discount were on tour in London. The two kept in contact before Mosshart moved to London from the U.S. and they became The Kills in 2001. They released their debut EP Black Rooster on Domino Records that same year.

The band’s debut full length Keep on Your Mean Side was released in 2003 and immediately registered with critics and landed the band on festival lineups and the start of touring alongside respected contemporaries and legends. No Wow was released in 2005 and featured single “The Good Ones,” which reached #23 on the UK Singles chart.

A third full-length, Midnight Boom, was released in 2008 followed by touring with The Raconteurs where Mosshart became part of the supergroup, The Dead Weather, in 2009 alongside Jack White, Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age and touring member of The Raconteurs and Jack Lawrence from The Raconteurs and Cincinnati’s own, The Greenhornes, following the tour. The Dead Weather released celebrated album Horehound in 2009, followed by Sea of Cowards the next year before The Kills returned with the acclaimed Blood Pressures in 2011, their highest charting in the U.S. to date that features standouts like the delicate and timeless melody of “Baby Says” and the fuzz noir of “Satellite.”

Ash & Ice, their 2016 full-length album, featuring the single “Doing It to Death,” became their highest charting record in the UK.

The band is currently on tour in support of their newest record, God Games, released in late 2023.

The Kills play Bogart’s on Feb. 17 at 8 p.m. Info: bogarts.com.

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