Live Review: The Kills, Cable Ties

Melbourne band Cable Ties stretched punk songs out into slightly tiresome prog-rocky marathons, lead singer Jenny McKechnie's screeching voice seeming jarring, a hindrance to the experimentation in hybridising genre.

The Kills checked into Sydney and set up shop in Enmore Theatre for their Splendour sideshow, exhibiting their new album Ash & Ice, as well as all the enigmatic garage favourites from their previous four studio albums, to an Australian crowd starved of their presence for five years.

Alison Mosshart (vocalist and occasional guitarist) and Jamie Hince (guitarist and sometimes vocalist) moved with undulating and foreboding grace, displaying an ebb and flow, a simpatico crafted over 15 years of playing together.

While The Kills garner much of their energy from the aforementioned simpatico, this was aided and in no way hindered by the addition of the two live musicians (drums, bass/keys) on stage. In fact, the backing musicians provided a harmonious background to the frenetic to and fro at the front of the stage. 

Hince has this incredible power of building songs out of primal and rudimentary riffs before transforming them into sonic walls, accompanied by the rhythm section of the touring keys/bass player and live drummer. 

Mosshart has a similar ability, cutting through with simple and direct lyrics that reach the audience with an ethereal grit. Somewhere between a melodic croon and an earthy and gravelly roar, the effect was raw, almost animal.

Mosshart and Hince's stage presence is undeniable. The former cavorted like a Halloween marionette, bending and twisting in a manic yet measured performance. The latter gallivanted, punching out riffs with his guitar as his weaponry, thrusting it about in a cool militaristic show.

To cap it all off, the band were gracious to their fans, players through and through, bringing their audience to the height of volcanic exasperation in gripping and meaty two- to four-minute songs before abruptly ripping them out of those worlds of sound, thanking them for coming along for the ride.