The new Kills album, No Wow, is like an album of love songs with all the romance of a seedy strip club. W’s sensuous, almost bluesy vocals have the allure and raw sex of an erotic dancer while Hotel’s mechanical neo-new wave beats are a reminder that you can’t touch. Hotel’s fuzzy garage guitar is just enough edge to make the whole thing even more dark and unsettling. “Murdermile” and “Dead Road 7” are particularly dark, but the whole set makes you feel like your brain is, to borrow from Jim Morrison, “squirming like a toad.”
