THE KILLS

Blood Pressures

[Domino]

After releasing their third album together, 2008’s Midnight Boom, Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince took a break from the Kills and found new foils for their outsized personalities. Mosshart spent the hiatus singing for Jack White’s voodoo-punk supergroup the Dead Weather, while Hince found himself a U.K. tabloid fixture by getting engaged to supermodel Kate Moss. While their lives have changed, the duo’s musical chemistry has not. With few exceptions, the Kills’ fourth album is filled with the same kind of swampy, sexy electro-blues bangers they’ve been dropping since 2000. As always, Mosshart plays the tough, shadowy seductress—rock’s answer to Angelina Jolie—while Hince lurks in the background, supplying lean, mechanized beats and delta-punk riffs. The duo shows its range with the sensitive piano ballads “Wild Charms” and “The Last Goodbye,” but who wants a kinder, gentler Kills? It feels way better to blast “Satellite,” their bruising take on 2 Tone ska. –Kenneth Partridge