Kills

Awaited for two months, after the cancellation of the live show last April 2nd due to an illness that struck James Hince, the Kills are finally in front of our ears. He strictly english style, she with her more punk-inflected attitude, framed by a leopard-print backdrop, the aggressive gaze of someone who plays with lived-in intensity, and the guarded movements of someone who's had that glam streak, which first got them noticed, stitched to their shoulders.

"No Wow" is the first song of the evening, a spot-on choice as an opener, given the claustrophobic intro that holds the tension before rolling away towards the finale. There won't be too many dips into their other records, deliberately so, I'd wager, since the tour is tied to their latest album "Blood Pressures".

It's interesting how, in a garage-rock live show like the one in front of us tonight, so much more room can be given to personality and stage presence than to the music itself. James "Hotel" Hince builds every single note for the sinuous Alison "VV" Mosshart: she is the only true star. With her spiralling movements, she looks like a bewitching Venus who doesn't need to look you in the eye, forever hidden behind her dark mane. The songs come one after another until a resurgence of the album "Midnight Bloom" with the big singles "U.R.A. Fever" and "Tape Song", during which an unidentified but evidently rather worked-up specimen, with two strokes of the arms, manages, disturbingly, to vault over the barriers. And here opens up the whole dilemma of the role of security at concerts.

At the Magazzini, the security staff are briefed in a particularly aggressive, somewhat excessive way, especially for a concert like this one by the Kills; on the other hand, the intentions of anyone trying to get onstage without authorization aren't always clear-cut either. All this to say that James Hince, during this particular tackle, stopped the concert, went to retrieve the young man who'd been violently thrown out and, not content with that, using euphemisms better left unrepeated, warned the security guys to behave with more restraint towards the audience. It would have been fun to ask Alison what she thought about it, given the disgusted look on her face after the hug her musical partner's new friend gave her.

Closing the gossip parenthesis, let's get back to the live show. As we were saying, there's only one great protagonist, who, dancing and murmuring her seductive lines, picks up the guitar every now and then, then the keyboard, and makes her way back and forth across the amplifiers around the stage.

The concert flies by in a flash until it's time to say goodbye. There is, however, room for a brief encore: Ali reappears in a golden tunic, the definitive coronation of the queen she now is. "Last Goodbye" is intense and nobody dares breathe, a few lighters flick on. Then, in quick succession, "Post And Pants" and "Friend My Little Brains". A concert lasting barely over an hour, a little short given the duo's four albums to date, but weighing in the emotional impact and the thoroughly charged atmosphere of the whole evening, we can leave satisfied, finally certain that the Kills really did pass through here.

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