We’ve gone through so much life together… it’s been tense and joyful, say The Kills ahead of new album God Games
THE names Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart often crop up in relation to their significant others.
He’s been called “Mr Kate Moss” because of his supermodel ex-wife.
She’s been making the gossip columns thanks to her blossoming romance with actor Damian Lewis.
But I’m focusing on the duo’s enduring musical partnership as The Kills, which dates back to 2001.
This month sees the release of their sixth studio album, God Games, an effortlessly cool career highlight.
So I find myself sitting opposite Hince and Mosshart on one of those balmy, unseasonal autumn afternoons we’ve been having.
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The venue is a boutique hotel’s rooftop terrace in London’s hip Shoreditch . . . where else?
I find them in relaxed mood, riffing off each other as they describe their latest collaboration.
More on the album to come but first I put them on the spot by asking what Alison likes about Jamie and what Jamie likes about Alison.
“Oh, stop it!” laughs Hince, but he soon relents.
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With her bleach blonde hair, big black shades and New “F***ing” York City T-shirt, singer Mosshart is channelling her inner Debbie Harry. Only she’s a lot less inscrutable.
‘We made a pact’
To continue the Big Apple theme, retro-styled Hince, also in shades, wouldn’t look out of place in one of his chief inspirations, The Velvet Underground.
“I feel like we’ve grown up together,” says Alison, glancing at Jamie.
“We’ve gone through so much life together. We’ve toured the world and made records. Things have been tense and things have been joyful.”
Hince chips in: “We made The Kills really precious very early on. It was like an altar that I felt must be protected at all costs.”
The band has a pure, uncompromising indie aesthetic . . . all razor-sharp guitars, skewed synths, scuzzy beats and Mosshart’s bluesy vocals to die for.
They’re also not afraid to throw in horns and gospel choirs when the mood takes them.
Mosshart again: “When we started, we made a pact. It was that these two people could do whatever they wanted.”
And Hince: “PJ Harvey was our template.
“I remember her Rid Of Me (a raw rock effort) and then, two albums later, she’s doing Is This Desire? — a weird, minimal glitch record.
“I just thought, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I don’t want to be weighed down by the albatross of a drummer!”
The Kills formed after Mosshart, born 44 years ago in Florida, found herself staying in South London only to discover that her future bandmate was living upstairs.
“I was downstairs at this flat on Gipsy Road and I heard him playing guitar through the ceiling,” she recalls. “I didn’t know who he was but I just remember that I had never heard anything quite like it before — and that has not changed to this day.”
Mosshart concludes: “In the best possible sense, Jamie has a really wacky brain. It’s genius. It’s amazing!”
Their endearing love-in continues with Hince’s turn to share his thoughts.
He says: “I like the power of the two of us, without anyone else diluting it.
“The ability of Alison’s that I would love to have myself is the way she just vomits art.
“I overthink everything but she has no fear, making things spontaneously, without questioning them.”
Hince adds: “Unlike me, she doesn’t have this hierarchy of good and bad but I’ve been taught to worry whether something is good enough.
“That can be a f***ing burden. Sometimes the art you make should be a bit obstreperous and a bit difficult.” Mosshart picks up on his point: “Maybe that is why we’re such a good combination.
“I don’t even have the thing in my brain that makes me go, ‘Is this bad?’
“When I think about my favourite songs I’ve ever written, I don’t know where the f*** the lyrics came from.
“Jamie will send me a piece of piano music and, in a few seconds, I’ll have a whole song and send it back.”
It’s seven years since The Kills’ previous album, Ash & Ice, appeared but, as with so many artists, Covid upended the duo’s plans.
Hince, who spent lockdown in Los Angeles, says the pandemic “took two or three years out of our careers”.
He adds: “For me, it was like having a manic episode. I was sewing, making trousers, embroidering. I even bought a photo-booth.”
For Mosshart, who is based in Nashville, it was a time of “pyjama mania” but she draws positives because the new album, completed in the aftermath, has turned out great.
She says: “Even though we all had a really rubbish time, I love this record so much.”
I’m keen to discover what inspired the album and song title, God Games, and Hince jumps in with an answer.
Despite calling himself an atheist, he went through a dark period during the pandemic when he felt as if some otherworldly force was playing games with him.
“There was a moment when things couldn’t get worse,” he says. “One of my favourite artists of all time, MF Doom, died and then I broke both my feet and I was in a wheelchair.
“I was thinking, ‘Stop f***ing with me!’ and then I wrote the song God Games. It just came out of my mouth.”
Hince googled the phrase and discovered it was “a sub-genre of video games, like The Sims or Afterlife”.
“Where you’re the creator of the universe!” interjects Mosshart.
Cue Hince going into a reverie about playing God in his studio with “the power to move issues and themes around in my songs”.
Next we consider the shimmering album standout 103, which, explains Mosshart, refers to the “insane temperatures we’ve been getting”.
She says: “If you knew me really well, you would know I’m fully allergic to the sun and I hate being hot.
“If it’s over 78 degrees [25C], I’m crying, losing my mind and grumpy!”
Then she looks out across the urban Shoreditch landscape and adds: “Today is beautiful but it takes nothing and I’m done. All I do is look at the weather on my phone now.”
The album begins with The Kills’ stirring ode to the city that never sleeps, New York, following in the footsteps of Sinatra, Lou Reed, Jay-Z and countless others.
Mosshart is a massive fan of the place and says: “It has a 24-hour city energy and anything can happen.
“I wish I was into sports, then I would support all the New York teams — but I’m not.”
She’s never actually lived in NYC, although she and Hince often stayed at the Chelsea Hotel, fabled retreat of musicians and writers, during the early days of The Kills.
“That was the greatest time of my life,” says Mosshart.
“It was very cheap. There were no lightbulbs in the lamps and no batteries in the remote controls.
“But it was the most amazing and supportive place, full of incredible people.
‘Gonna raise hell’
“I wish there were more places like that. I owe so many thanks to New York.”
Hince quips: “It was the f***ing coldest time of my life.”
Although he did get to visit the intersection of Lexington Avenue and 125th St, the place where Lou Reed scores drugs in The Velvet Underground song, I’m Waiting For The Man.
Another God Games song, LA Hex, a pun on “hellish” airport LAX, finds The Kills on America’s western seaboard.
It contains Mosshart’s wonderful line, “I’m in heaven, I’m gonna raise hell”.
“In your own brain, you’re always dealing with light and shade, good and bad,” she says by way of explanation. “A million rollercoasters during a day.”
Hince says: “I love that simplicity in lyrics. Skirting a cliché, just twisting it enough.
“When Alison wrote the line, I thought, ‘Has that honestly never been written before? People have missed a trick with that one.”
In order to get the creative juices flowing for God Games, Hince encouraged Mosshart to invest in a keyboard and learn how to use it.
“I’d been writing on acoustic guitar for ever, so this was amazing for me, a whole new world,” she says.
“Jamie just suggested, ‘Why don’t you buy this little Akai MIDI keyboard? It’s a hundred bucks. You just plug it into your GarageBand and see what happens.’
“So I got one and wrote every song on it — I couldn’t stop. I’m sure every teenage kid knows about this but I didn’t.”
Fittingly, bearing in mind the title, God Games was finished at The Church Studios in London under the watchful eye of an old friend, in-demand producer Paul Epworth (Adele, Paul McCartney). Epworth, they tell me, “was our very first soundman in 2002 when we had two amps, a lightbulb and a couple of mics in a van”.
Another striking feature of the album is the appearance of Compton Kidz Club Choir on My Girls My Girls, who were recorded in LA.
They are the product of an after-school programme for underprivileged children, mostly late teenagers, run by the inspirational Fred Martin.
Mosshart says: “I fell in love with those girls the second they walked in the door. As people and as singers, they are unreal.
“I was standing against a wall listening to them and the second they opened their mouths, I was like, ‘Woah, man!’”
Before we go our separate ways, the duo widen the discussion to include one of their music heroes.
This means Hince reporting on his stint playing guitar in Iggy Pop’s live band.
I tell him, “I can’t tell you how much I love Iggy,” which, quick as a flash, is followed by Mosshart saying: “I love him more though!”
Hince continues: “We were sitting around at dinner and someone said, ‘What is your New Year resolution?’
“And my joke back was, ‘I’m going to find God. I know you think I’m being facetious but I’m praying for positive things.’
“A week later, the phone rings . . . ‘Iggy wants to know if you’ll play guitar for him.’ I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me? Yes!’ That’s the closest to God I’ve ever got.
“The dude is a work of art. Musically and physically. It’s making the hairs on my arms stand up just talking about him.”
In the audience for Hince’s first show with Iggy was an overjoyed Mosshart.
“I have never been prouder,” she says. “It was f***ing amazing to watch them.”
Thinking about the enduring Iggy, Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, she adds: “I wonder about the generation I’m living in.
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“Are there people with such perseverance who don’t give a f***, who say ‘This is what I do and I will die on this stage?’”
Good question but the unbreakable bond between Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart, aka The Kills, suggests there are at least two of them out there.
