Blood Pressures

Blood Pressures is the fourth studio album by indie rock band The Kills. It was released on April 1, 2011 in the Republic of Ireland, Germany, Nordic Countries and Austria, in the UK on April 4, 2011, and in the United States on April 5, 2011.

The album was recorded at Key Club studio in Benton Harbor, Michigan, the same studio where the band had previously recorded both No Wow and Midnight Boom.^[2]

The first single "Satellite" was released on iTunes on 31 January 2011 and its video debuted on YouTube on 9 February. The song 'DNA' is currently available from their website as a free download if you sign up to the bands mailing list. The album is currently being streamed on their website for free.^[3]

Musical style

According to Q magazine, while the Midnight Boom album found the duo "moving away from their Suicide/Velvet roots" with hip hop beats and more considered approach, the fourth album "brings another change of gear", driven mostly by Mosshart’s recent stint in The Dead Weather.^[4] Slant Magazine described the Kills's fourth album as "another mostly successful attempt to wrench effective material from a barebones method of hollow attitude and instrumental minimalism". Masters of "a high-wire act" involving "a small bag of tricks shaken up a little differently each time", the Kills "write songs that are invariably concave structures, spacious echo chambers for lurching, fuzzed-out guitar and softly staccato talk-singing", keeping "drawing blood from this stone, readjusting and tweaking their formula", the reviewer expands.^[5] According to Jesse Cataldo, -

Starting with 2005's No Wow, the Kills have produced three almost skeletal meditations on the kind of black-hearted, fatalist sound originally fashioned by artists like Nick Cave. Each has fiddled with the proportions of straightforward stomp and slinky ambience: No Wow was sharp and spindly, ruled by the unsettling tremor of it's omnipresent drum machines; Midnight Boom was in some ways a step in an even sparser direction, full of empty spaces and off-kilter melodies; and Blood Pressures pushes back into more forceful territory, leaning on noise and distortion and dropping most pretenses of subtlety.^[5]

Critical reception

Blood Pressures received generally positive reviews upon its release. At AnyDecentMusic?, which collates reviews of contemporary music albums, the album received an average score of 7.2 (based on 34 professional reviews)^[12] with The Skinny reviewer Era Trieman describing it as "a leathery femme fatale massacre" and The Kills' "most ambitious and accomplished undertaking to date".^[13] Simon Harper of The Clash magazine, describing the album as "dirty, loud and intimidatingly sexy", argues that its the result of a year spent apart: "Hince's adventures in sound provide the album's thick production, while Mosshart's stint as Dead Weather frontwoman instils further confidence and swagger in her provocative lyrics".^[15]

Rob Fearn of the Q magazine, speaking of "clear signs of progress" in the quality of the band’s songwriting and calling the album's first single "Satellite" "an indie anthem in the making" still found some other bids for "maturity" less successful, mentioning "Wild Charms" (with Hince taking lead vocals) and Mosshart’s ballad "The Last Goodbye" among less convincing tracks.^[4]

Track listing

^[16]

Chart performance

Personnel

• Alison Mosshart - Vocals, Guitar
• Jamie Hince - Guitar, Vocals, Mellotron, Drums, Percussion, Producer

• Bill Skibbe - Producer, Engineer
• Jessica Ruffins - Engineer

References