what a beautiful state we're in

[hardparade]

I'm...posting about The Kills again. There are just some things I have to share. A bunch of pictures, this time, and some quotes from an awesome article in the magazine Notion, from sometime in 2008.








...sweaty.

We love The Kills for their enduring, symbiotic, intuitive and seemingly predestined partnership. "Weird," is the word Jamie uses, revealing, "it's hard for people to be let into it, and can be difficult for others to get their heads around!" Locked in what feels like a lifelong partnership that is sexless yet on the brink of climax; intensely private but also fit for public consumption, The Kills' bodies could be cryogenically frozen in separate cells at opposite corners of the earth, and still their cold, cold hearts would beat out a language whose meaning could only be deciphered between them. Forget lust; love, even, there just aren't the words the twist the bond uniting Jamie and Alison (Hotel and VV) into something decipherable for the rest of us. The closest we get—and it's mighty tantalising—is in giving ourselves up to the primal, seductive sound of their pairing.

A LIFELONG PARTNERSHIP THAT IS SEXLESS YET ON THE BRINK OF CLIMAX. That sums them up so perfectly. I love the way this writer really explores their relationship that way. The sexual aspect isn't ignored because of how inexplicable it is, it's accepted instead, as an integral part of who they are and the way they work.


Gahhh his face.


Her face!


Once again: HER FACE.


...You can't actually see her face in this one, but I bet if you could it'd be worth commenting on.

Indeed, one way to make your life into a band and make a band your life would be to entirely isolate yourself, to reject the real world and reside within an alternative sphere of your own making. Which, as we know, is what The Kills feel compelled to do when writing an album, but which is also exactly what lovers tend to do in the first maddening stages of romance. Evidently, any other partners who pass through The Kills' lives (for once, Ms Moss is not excepted, and doubtless Mr Hack also followed suit when he dated Alison a few years ago—ah, the incest, what a tangled web they weave!) will have to arrive onto their scene armed with some mighty strong powers of understanding.

Did...did anyone else know Alison dated Jefferson Hack? Because, um. Jefferson Hack is the father of Kate Moss's daughter. THERE IS SERIOUS FIC POTENTIAL OF SOME KIND HERE I THINK. They dated a couple! Kind of! I can't even get my head around it. Also: so true about their partners really needing to be able to understand. I'm not sure I could be with someone who had a relationship like that with someone else.


I love how his scarf matches her shirt, lol.


Awwwww. Also, I would like to point out that another one of the shirts Alison wears a lot is black with white polka dots, and that's what Jamie's scarf is here. *tinhats*


I want them to sing into the same mic always.


Kiss! ♥


His hand on her jacket, nnngh.


So cute!


There's something that always gets me about their total...ease with each other. They just always look so completely comfortable together and like, peaceful somehow.


♥




I love how she's looking at him in both of these.

To challenge the necessity of the musicians' closeness would almost be like attempting to prise apart Siamese twins—believe, even suggesting the soulmates should put some distance between them would pose a physical kind of threat. "You have to take into account that on some level it destroys family ties, destroys relationships..." Jamie continues.

Living in the same London apartment block (individual flats separated by stairs), The Kills can barricade themselves off from normality quite easily: the seal of their 'bubble' is secure. Still, this ain't a typical bubble; it appears to be made of invisible chainmail, for even the countless, searing eyes of an audience cannot pierce it. Another of The Kills' fingers up in the face of convention is that when they play a gig, their audience is merely another part of the paraphernalia, essential but interchangeable with the lights, the microphones, the backing tracks...Sure, Alison teases the front row, leaning right into their faces so they might just catch a fleck of spit as she sings, or violently thrusting her crotch at them, but really, her show is for Jamie alone. The performance compels us precisely because we are on the outside looking in, largely ignored, unable to touch, gazing at something forbidden, erotic, and strange.

That kind of intense, passionate, obsessive, unhealthy love is so fascinating to me. I love the comparison to conjoined twins. And the idea of Alison's 'show' just being for Jamie, as well as being crazy hot, is interesting too. The way they cut themselves off from the audience, the way the whole thing is just about them and their connection with each other.


fffffffff so hot


...I...will be in my bunk.


I...don't even have words. THEIR LOVE IS MY FAVOURITE THING.


Also, this. I just can't even. Unnnnf.

Simultaneously juddering and convulsing with every riff, singing into the same mic although there are two onstage and we might not even be able to hear one of them, and then there's the mesmeric eye contact they maintain throughout the show—that's right, us groundlings can't even get a look-in! And you can forget any kind of verbal interaction; song introductions, anecdotes, thankyous and the like, this just isn't your average kind of gig. Who needs a drummer when you have Alison masterfully stomping her cowboy boots? Why would you want cheap thrills when before you is the sight of the gothic siren stroking a greasy microphone stand, her eyes screwed tight in throes of ecstasy? It's like watching a rarefied kind of foreplay through a peephole, foreplay where the lovers never touch each other or undress; there's some mystical gratification going on that will forever elude the voyeur/concert-attendee. It irks most critics and would upset a certain kind of fan, but this strange sexuality that The Kills share onstage, and that seems to originate in sound, is the band in its purest distillation. Alison confides: "I love being on stage. There's a real freedom to it that I haven't found doing anything else. It's immediate, and scary, and exciting, there's a lot of adrenaline and a lot of room for error...you can't rewind or start again...Playing live is the truest representation of what we do."

Again, so perfect. Foreplay where the lovers never touch each other or undress. That's what their live performance is, and that's what I want to try to write about in fic. I'm really fascinated by the whole sex-but-not-sex concept and the fic idea I'm playing around with is based on that. The way they make the sexual tension in their relationship work, without ever actually having sexual contact with each other. On stage and off stage, finding ways to get relief/gratification without risking ruining the relationship they have. I don't even know why it's so interesting, IT JUST IS, OKAY.