STACK #194 Dec 2020

MUSIC FEATURE

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INTERVIEW

ALISON MOSSHART THE KILLS

feels as if it belongs in Mosshart’s throat, screaming and slinking. It’s one of the stand-outs on a record absolutely bursting with them – Little Bastards , a collection of rarities and B-sides, out this month. The story goes that in the early ‘00s, Mosshart and Hince had a ton of ideas but not piles of technical prowess, or even – and this is the lynchpin – a drummer, something they were looking for but were concerned might hamper the electric, “psychic”

I t’s not often you remember the exact moment you heard a now-beloved song for the first time (unless you’re Twinsthenewtrend of course), but Alison Mosshart has a particular occasion engraved in her brain, such was its impact. The song: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins' 1956 humdinger I Put A Spell On You . The circumstance: A deliberate spin from her musical soulmate Jamie Hince, in 2009. “He played it to me, and then I lost my mind because I loved it so much, ” the bright and animated musician says, with real ardour. “You know those songs that just speak to you, and it feels like, ‘Hey, that’s my song; I understand that song, I want to get inside that song, I want that song to be inside of me ’?” The pair recorded their cover of I Put A Spell On You either that very day or the day after, and the result was something remarkable: the song Duo of swamp-garage delight The Kills are about to release a shockingly good album of rarities; here's the beginning of our enlightening chat with vocalist- guitarist Alison Mosshart, but you'll want to read the full beat @ stack.com.au. Words Zoë Radas

flow of thoughts careening between them. One day they got their hands on a Roland 880 – an eight-track sequencer with a drum machine built in – and realised they’d completed their triumvirate. The beloved machine was dubbed Little Bastard. One of the songs on the record earmarks the first recording sessions Mosshart and Hince ever completed with Little Bastard – the pulsating, scraggy honkytonk of

putting together some kind of document, from back when you had to record a million B-sides.” And why did they have to record a million B-sides? Because it was the era of the CD single, when artists were expected to include remixes, alt-versions, or entirely new tracks on the disc – not to mention international package requirements. “We were

constantly gangbusters, writing songs in a day, recording them for special editions of this, special releases of that, something for Japan, something for France,” says Mosshart. “It was crazy..."

Jewel Thief . “We weren’t called The Kills yet; we even hadn’t played a show yet,” says Mosshart. “ Jewel Thief was just us f-cking around. We were literally making a micro-song out of sounds from telephones, scissors, drum tracks, and just whatever. I wanted to [include it] because it’s important – like, you’re

Little Bastards by The Kills is out Dec 11 via Domino.

Continue to read the full interview online at stack.com.au

POWDERFINGER UNEARTHED

“T ell me when you’re coming home,” Bernard Fanning pleas on Unreleased single Daybreak – which prompts the question, could this be the prequel to My Happiness ? It’s more than possible, seeing at this collection of buried jewels was recorded between 1998’s Internationalist , spanning across Odyssey Number Five (where the 5 x Platinum My Happiness sits) and all the way up to 2010’s Golden Rule . Most of these tracks display the guts of the band’s earliest material: a little more given to slashy or stumbling (never fumbling) drums, abrupt and angular interludes, fanging away on an electric guitar chord for far longer than is decent, and swears (“Stick it right up your ar-e" – Lou Dolmand ). It’s a neat game picking out familiar motifs (the “Ooh-la-la-la”s at the end of Rule Of Thumb are identical to the outro “Ooh-la-la-la”s of Internationalist ’s biggest hit Passenger ), but you’re just as likely to get a curveball to the crotch if you aren’t paying attention. Current 'Finger fans will definitely dig, but those whose club membership has lapsed will get an absolute ton out of this record. ZKR

Unreleased by Powderfinger is out now via Universal.

DECEMBER 2020

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