The Kills must have brass balls. That’s the only way to explain why anybody in their right mind would agree to follow opening acts Hunters and JEFF the Brotherhood at the 9:30 club.
By the time the first two sets were over, The Kills had made themselves some pretty big shoes to fill. And then they filled them. Twice.
Immediately noticeable about Hunters, who played first, was that they were a lot like the Yeah Yeah Yeahs — all the way down to the sexual tension between the lead singer and lead guitar player.
Next came the realization that this chemistry wasn’t a bad thing at all.
Prowling the stage like a banshee siren, lead singer Isabel Almieda managed to pull off Karen O better than Karen O could, and in the process made the Yeah Yeah Yeahs seem tame. Almieda thrashed around the stage with energy unseen since punk died in the ’80s. Her banshee yell didn’t sit above the music, but rather pierced straight through lead guitarist Derek Watson’s reverb-soaked riffs.
For a very short period, Hunters’ opening set seemed insurmountable for the other bands following them.
Then JEFF the Brotherhood came out.
In an industry saturated with two-piece guitar/drum bands, JEFF the Brotherhood stands out simply by being louder and kicking more ass than everybody else. JEFF, composed of brothers Jake (guitar and vocals) and Jamin (drums) Orrall, exists in the insane crossroads of punk, grunge and psych, sounding like the unruly love child of Nirvana and the Stooges. And they were just as loud as that sounds. It took seven people to set up their amps before their set.
By the time JEFF reached their most popular song and de facto anthem “The Ripper,” a sizable mosh pit had already formed, and even those outside of the danger zone were surging along with Jake’s riff, which was reminiscent of and every bit as powerful as Black Sabbath’s “Paranoid.”
However, JEFF wasn’t all garage fuzz; every now and then Jamin would show off his jazz chops with short but great solos, which were then interrupted by more garage fuzz and Iggy Pop-style vocals from his brother.
Any thoughts of The Kills being upstaged by their openers vanished as VV (Alison Mosshart) and Hotel (Jamie Hince) came out like the third and fourth horsemen of the apocalypse, heralding their arrival with full, powerful noise rock.
VV came out looking and sounding like a witch, howling over Hotel’s guitar playing, which was the kind of fuzzed-out industrial drone that’s usually reserved for Lou Reed at his meanest. For almost an hour, he never relented, scratching and punching his guitar into noisy feedback-laced submission.
When he finally did let up, it was for a slowed-down, drone-heavy cover of Willie Nelson’s “Crazy,” representing the first time that somebody has sung the lyric “I’m crazy” and had everyone in the room immediately agree. On this track and throughout the concert, VV’s vocals were spot-on, but were more often than not overshadowed or drowned out by Hotel’s frenzied guitar attack, which like the rest of the entire show, turned out just like it should have.
