The Kills in an interview: The sunglasses remain

Sturdy leather jacket, wool sweater and big sunglasses – that’s so typical of The Kills, you have to take a quick look at your cell phone to see what year it is because the British-American duo sits across from you during the interview so wonderfully timeless and weatherless. Everything seems possible here – whether in 2003 or 2024. The conversation dynamics of Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince isn’t all that dissimilar to the early days when they released their debut KEEP ON YOUR MEAN SIDE twenty years ago. They interrupt each other, then laugh with their heads back and shortly afterwards both remain silent in a way that doesn’t seem unpleasant. Who needs to look each other in the eye for that? They only put them down for a photo. Through their bulletproof glasses, the duo wants to convey that this what-date-do-we-actually attitude is absolutely their thing.

Less stress from now on

Although they are currently promoting their sixth record with GOD GAMES, they still feel catapulted back decades. The quasi-ABC shooters Mosshart and Hince tested the writing process on the piano for their current work – which Hince first had to learn. This attempt was just as tough at the beginning as it was profitable with every new touch of the keys. Another constant and innovation: Paul Epworth, a friend and the band’s first tour sound mixer when they were still chugging from concert to concert in a van, accompanied them as a producer (and in his job already worked for Bloc Party, Adele, Kate Nash ) while recording the twelve tracks to album length. “We’ve never worked with a producer before. I mean, we wanted to, but every time it turned out too disastrous to take any further steps. Now we wanted to try again to stress me less so that I could become more of a creator,” explains Hince, shaking his head a little in disbelief.

When you talk about your GOD GAMES, the term magic often comes up. They say it’s hard to explain and isn’t meant to be imitated anyway. Specifically, Hince says: “Making music is like painting – the picture already tells you what to do. You have to let it run its course.” And from Mosshart: “As an artist, you reflect and react to what is happening in the world. And then things come together, as if by chance, and form a connection. You just have to be open to it. You have to wait for these moments. If you can grab it, then comes the next waiting. Now is the time to really work on it. You have to remain open to the fact that they can mutate more and more. This makes me find talking about songs difficult. The tracks on the album have taken so many turns along the way. What is there of my initial thought? How do I get it formulated? These are magical, almost indescribable moments that you can’t recreate in exactly the same way.”

“We felt like we were in the Sims video game”

The Kills are just old school. Mosshart smokes in your face when he speaks and Hince doesn’t want to commit to clear statements, perhaps remaining a kind of mythical creature. And the sunglasses stay on even after you tell them that you would feel so strange without glasses protection in front of them. Like it’s 2003 all over again. But luckily the two often smile in conversation, you just have to provoke them out of their rock’n’roll checkerism. For example, by pointing out that one is now surprised at how smoothly a word like “God” comes out of the cynical lips and how good and full of meaning it would sound straight away. Hince said: “But GOD GAMES was a perfect fit for the pandemic, don’t you think? Everything you heard on the news and experienced every day made you want to look up to the sky and scream, ‘Why are you playing these games with us?’ We felt like we were in the ‘Sims’ video game – which, by the way, is by definition a ‘God Game’. At a certain point, when we made music, we thought that we were inventing a god in our own way. That felt pleasantly dangerous. Also a bit like ‘Hunger Games’” – whereupon he has to laugh loudly.

You can tell from the 54-year-old that his job isn’t that difficult for him at the moment. Being able to hand over a bit of “responsibility”, as he calls producing, after all these years as a Kills producer and just play around on the guitar, obviously did him good. His band is also getting older and even sticks to reasonable bedtimes. And so for GOD GAMES they went into the studio with the tracks already finalized and only had to record what was planned. Easy. “Maybe it’s age, but I feel free. “I don’t feel any pressure anymore,” he says. The man who liked to take the floor in past interviews now leans back more often, scratches his head with the same short hairstyle and makes the corners of his mouth drawn down appear more amused than Merkel-sulky. It’s exciting to see Alison Mosshart taking up space and gesticulating with her dark green painted fingernails. Then she suddenly wants to talk about the role of art in the midst of the “apocalyptic world”: “Everything is just disturbing enough, what else should I do with the music other than try to disturb it a little? We have to create things to get along. And the fact that we have this opportunity makes me euphoric. Because I know that’s how I survive.” And then move on to how she approaches writing: “Creating songs has a lot to do with dissociating. You apply what you have learned, but as soon as you want to turn it into art, it goes hand in hand with a dissociation process. You no longer own the idea, you put so much effort into the art that it is ripped out of you. And the album title alone is the ultimate form of dissociation.”

“We just always knew who we were as a band”

For GOD GAMES listeners, no dissociation is immediately apparent. It’s an album that you’re used to from the band. Despite the piano as the first starting point, Hince’s guitar pulls you through the work in a demanding, uncompromising, booming, fluffy way – just as Mosshart’s everything-roasting voice can never be confused. When she sings, there are only her lyrics as law, not a matter of interpretation. No wonder that she doesn’t follow her gut feeling when writing the lyrics: “When I write songs, I don’t have a concrete feeling about them. It’s more like pictures or even films that drag on inside me. It’s not a linear process either and can almost make your head explode, but this chaos usually leads me to material for an entire album. For me, this is a more honest process than going by a feeling.”

The Kills still see their job as musicians as “making beautiful things out of something ugly” like everyday life. They are a group that focuses more on continuity than on change. The rest is all about, after a seven-year break they’re giving us an album that has something to say about the times and yet doesn’t have an expiration date. It’s actually clear that Mosshart would like to add at the end of the interview: “I’m proud of all of our albums. We just always knew who we were as a band and that made it so easy for us to go into recording the album.”