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hardparadeSo I want to talk about The Kills. First of all, the important news is that I'm going to see them in concert which is still sort of blowing my mind a little bit, and like, the gig is at the end of the month so I should probably start believing that it's actually happening. I might have mentioned this before, but I don't cope very well with concerts. I get freaked out by crowds and heat, and standing up for long periods of time, and I've actually fainted at gigs before. But I said a while ago that if The Kills ever came to my city, I would just have to go, and it's true—I can't imagine missing out on the opportunity.
SO THAT IS A THING THAT IS HAPPENING.
I also just wanted to talk about the new album and like, the changes that are apparent to me, in their sound and their relationship.
First of all, I'm probably totally reading too much into this. But it seems like something about them has changed, particularly when they're performing. I haven't been watching a LOT of their recent performances so it's quite possible that I've missed something, but I haven't seen any of their usual stage-sex antics going on at all. And I know it wasn't something that they used to do at every single show, or anything, but like—even songs like 'Kissy Kissy', that used to be like, dripping with sexual tension, and they would just sort of gravitate towards each other during it and not take their eyes off each other, and that just doesn't happen in the same way anymore. They don't finish with 'Dropout Boogie' anymore either, which I guess makes sense, because they have new songs now, but it's a song that they always got super intense during, so it's interesting to me. Same with 'Last Day of Magic'. They still seem to get close onstage, but it seems less sexually-charged.
At first I was thinking the change in their relationship might be due to Kate—like, Jamie moving out, and stuff—but it makes more sense for it to be because of The Dead Weather. I mean, Alison has gone off with this other band, and gained more experience with her stage presence, like she's learnt how to front a fourpiece band and sort of be the main focus of it. And so she maybe doesn't rely on Jamie so much onstage anymore. She doesn't need that comfort, maybe, and she's grown used to a different stage dynamic. ALTHOUGH, she shares the mic with Jack, and had some pretty intense sexual tension with him onstage too.
So then Jamie—well, I always got the impression that he needed Alison more onstage than she did him, like he's said stuff about how her eyes are his security blanket and if he stops looking at her he feels lost, etc. (Let's just take a moment and wait for the hearts to disappear from my eyes. Okay.) And so I think maybe all of that meant more to him? And then he sees Alison with The Dead Weather, and sees how she is with Jack. And he did say that it was weird watching her share the mic with him, because that was "their thing", and it felt like an out-of-body experience. Which I find very interesting, because that's obviously partly jealousy, but it's also sort of like he took a step back and really saw how he and Alison look when they're onstage, and maybe it freaked him out. I feel like they're so in denial of the sexuality of their performances that it's ridiculous sometimes, but maybe he genuinely didn't see it until he saw what it looked like from an outsider's perspective, watching Alison with Jack.
And so I think that could have contributed to it in two ways. Like, maybe it did freak him out, maybe it made him want to stop being like that with her, because when he was in denial of the sexuality of it it was okay, but now that he's aware of it, it's too weird? Or maybe it's just the jealousy thing—now that he knows Alison can get like that with another man, he thinks it means less to her, or he just feels weird about being that way with her when he knows Jack has done that too.
It still doesn't really explain things like the stage-sex. I mean, that was never really something anyone could explain in the first place, but I took it as a way of working out their sexual tension in a safe space, and now that it's gone I'm not sure what to think. Alison never went that far with Jack, and her experience with The Dead Weather shouldn't really have had so much of an effect on it. It could be to do with Kate, this time, but—Jamie's been with Kate for a long time, it seems odd that he'd start feeling uncomfortable or she'd start complaining now, just because they're engaged or whatever.
Before I get into the music stuff, some pictures!
Alison's breathplay fetish is still going strong.
Lolol also somebody on Tumblr made this and it brought me endless joy.
But I seriously can't even with them sometimes. SHE IS ON THE FLOOR. HE IS STANDING UP AND PULLING HER HAIR. Hnnng.
I thiiink this one is fairly recent, so they still do the shooting-with-the-guitar thing.
And this. ♥
GAH cutest ever.
Too adorable. Can't. Brain malfunctioning.
Guh.
Lol, the caption.
Right, despite the cuteness/hotness of some of those, it definitely seems like something has changed between them. The new album backs that up, too. It's fairly obvious, I think, that 'Blood Pressures' is quite different to their others. There's still something fundamentally Kills-y about it, but their older albums were so stripped-back and sparse and had this feeling of intensity and claustrophobia, and it was just these two obsessed people and a drum machine, you know? And on this album, they play other instruments (hardly, but still!) and there's a choir, and it just feels so much like they've expanded and allowed other things/people into their little world.
One of the most obvious differences to me is the inclusion of the two ballads. The Kills have done slower songs before, but these are like, actual ballads, which seems unusual to me. It also seems significant that they have one each—I'm not sure it's ever been so obvious that a particular song belonged to one of them more than the other, but with these, they sing alone. (Which is especially weird for Jamie, who almost never sings alone!) Alison's is 'The Last Goodbye', and I sort of can't quite get my head round it.
It makes sense for it to be about Jamie, about her realising that their love will never be complete and he's found Kate and maybe she needs to move on too. The line 'I can't survive on a half-hearted love that will never be whole' particularly makes me think of them, because it's like, there's SO MUCH to the love they have for each other but it's just not complete in the traditional/conventional sense, like it's romantic and sexual but they're not in love and they're not having sex. But it seems almost too in-your-face, like, I sort of can't believe she would write/sing something like this about Jamie. I feel quite resistant to the idea of them actually being aware of their deeper feelings for one another. I still feel like they're very much in denial of it.
And there are parts of it that don't quite make sense to me, anyway. The whole 'goodbye' theme is an obvious one—who is she saying goodbye to? It's not as if she and Jamie are "breaking up". And then 'I learned to cry for someone else'—I wondered if maybe that was a reference to her feelings for Jack? And I've heard people say that maybe the whole song is about Jack, which also makes a certain degree of sense. It makes sense of the 'don't ever match up' part, like she's saying what she has with Jack can't measure up to what she has with Jamie, maybe. But at the same time I sort of feel like there's almost too much love in this song for it to be about Jack, but maybe I'm just not willing to believe she feels that strongly about him? Idk, idk.
There's just something about the lyrics of this song, it's almost like it's a code or something—like I feel like it could be incredibly revealing if I could just make sense of it? Nothing quite seems to fit, but then, maybe she did that on purpose. And of course, it could be about some other man, an ex, but that just seems unlikely to me because as far as we know she hasn't had a boyfriend for quite a while, and the song is just so raw and open and full of love and pain that it must be about a very serious relationship in her life.
Jamie's ballad is called 'Wild Charms'.
I was gonna say that it makes more sense to me, but I do get confused by the 'you' and 'her' referred to in the first part. Like, I sort of assume the 'doting boys' 'riding roughshod' were The Dead Weather or maybe even Discount, but I also assume that the person playing 'concertos...upon [his] heartstrings' is Alison, so then the your/she thing doesn't quite work. Unless the 'she' is Kate. I assumed Alison because of the musical reference, but considering the fact that Kate and The Dead Weather have been the two catalysts for the change in Jamie and Alison's relationship, perhaps those references would make more sense.
EITHER WAY. I feel much more sure that this one is about their relationship. I mean, again, it's clearly about a serious relationship, and Jamie has been with Kate for quite a long time now and it doesn't make sense for it to be about someone he's planning to spend the rest of his life with. He's talking about the disappearance of some sort of feeling. And it all just ties in with the way his and Alison's relationship seems to have changed and the way they seem far less sexually-charged than they used to be. And perhaps, even, it's an admission of him feeling something more than friendship for her. Like maybe he's saying that a long time ago, he wanted her, but he buried the feelings away because he couldn't deal with them—his fire burnt them out.
The lyrics of this song also tie in with the lyrics of 'DNA', which I think is really cool.
It's the 'true, I had my chance/true true true I had those wild charms for you' that really gets me. And the entirety of both the verses, actually. They seem to be about the same sort of thing as 'Wild Charms'—missing out on a chance with somebody, and it being your own fault, and regretting it. This song, iirc, is also Jamie's, so it's almost like when he wrote the lyrics he was speaking to himself, and it has a whole different feel to it when it's Alison singing the words. It kind of makes my heart hurt.
The second verse...it's like, at the time, back when the chance was there, he didn't see it. It's like, he didn't feel that ache, that longing, back when they were 'young and sound'—i.e. the beginning of their friendship, and now his heart aches because he thinks (/knows?) he's missed that chance entirely—'glory passed [him] by'. And it's all so full of regret, like, he blames himself for that, because it was his fears and concerns that kept him from doing anything about his feelings. Because she was young, maybe, or because their relationship was too special to risk ruining. And then the rest of the lyrics seem optimistic, it's like he's saying "we won't let this change things, though, we can still be amazing together."
I guess, again, it's just odd to me that he would admit ever having those feelings for her in the first place, let alone regretting the fact that he didn't act on them. I really don't know if it's just my interpretation of their relationship, like, my resistance to the idea of them ever wanting to be a normal couple, or having normal romantic/sexual feelings for each other and wanting to get married and have babies—you know? I feel like their relationship is 100x more complicated than that and they're far too in denial (Jamie especially) to admit anything like this through song. BUT THEN WHAT ARE ALL THESE LYRICS ABOUT? They seem too significant to ignore.
There's also 'Future Starts Slow':
This one is a little more vague to me, in that I don't fully believe it's about their relationship necessarily. But, if written by Alison, the 'England, have my bones' part suggests it might be, along with all the pleading/promising not to give each other up and to love each other no matter what. Plus, that last part—second best? To Kate, maybe? And the mentions of feelings being gone, that seems like another reference to a change in their relationship.
And fiiiinally, there was the video for 'Satellite', which included a few moments that were—well, worth making gifs of?
I honestly just spent the entire video being completely unable to deal with the way they look at each other.
It also made me want Alison/Jamie roadtrip fic.
Man, am I done? I think I might be. Can I now just cling to you all and panic about the gig? I mean, anyone else's thoughts on all this ridiculous analysis would be nice, but mostly I think I just want to cling and panic. I am excited! It's just a very panicky sort of excitement.
SO THAT IS A THING THAT IS HAPPENING.
I also just wanted to talk about the new album and like, the changes that are apparent to me, in their sound and their relationship.
First of all, I'm probably totally reading too much into this. But it seems like something about them has changed, particularly when they're performing. I haven't been watching a LOT of their recent performances so it's quite possible that I've missed something, but I haven't seen any of their usual stage-sex antics going on at all. And I know it wasn't something that they used to do at every single show, or anything, but like—even songs like 'Kissy Kissy', that used to be like, dripping with sexual tension, and they would just sort of gravitate towards each other during it and not take their eyes off each other, and that just doesn't happen in the same way anymore. They don't finish with 'Dropout Boogie' anymore either, which I guess makes sense, because they have new songs now, but it's a song that they always got super intense during, so it's interesting to me. Same with 'Last Day of Magic'. They still seem to get close onstage, but it seems less sexually-charged.
At first I was thinking the change in their relationship might be due to Kate—like, Jamie moving out, and stuff—but it makes more sense for it to be because of The Dead Weather. I mean, Alison has gone off with this other band, and gained more experience with her stage presence, like she's learnt how to front a fourpiece band and sort of be the main focus of it. And so she maybe doesn't rely on Jamie so much onstage anymore. She doesn't need that comfort, maybe, and she's grown used to a different stage dynamic. ALTHOUGH, she shares the mic with Jack, and had some pretty intense sexual tension with him onstage too.
So then Jamie—well, I always got the impression that he needed Alison more onstage than she did him, like he's said stuff about how her eyes are his security blanket and if he stops looking at her he feels lost, etc. (Let's just take a moment and wait for the hearts to disappear from my eyes. Okay.) And so I think maybe all of that meant more to him? And then he sees Alison with The Dead Weather, and sees how she is with Jack. And he did say that it was weird watching her share the mic with him, because that was "their thing", and it felt like an out-of-body experience. Which I find very interesting, because that's obviously partly jealousy, but it's also sort of like he took a step back and really saw how he and Alison look when they're onstage, and maybe it freaked him out. I feel like they're so in denial of the sexuality of their performances that it's ridiculous sometimes, but maybe he genuinely didn't see it until he saw what it looked like from an outsider's perspective, watching Alison with Jack.
And so I think that could have contributed to it in two ways. Like, maybe it did freak him out, maybe it made him want to stop being like that with her, because when he was in denial of the sexuality of it it was okay, but now that he's aware of it, it's too weird? Or maybe it's just the jealousy thing—now that he knows Alison can get like that with another man, he thinks it means less to her, or he just feels weird about being that way with her when he knows Jack has done that too.
It still doesn't really explain things like the stage-sex. I mean, that was never really something anyone could explain in the first place, but I took it as a way of working out their sexual tension in a safe space, and now that it's gone I'm not sure what to think. Alison never went that far with Jack, and her experience with The Dead Weather shouldn't really have had so much of an effect on it. It could be to do with Kate, this time, but—Jamie's been with Kate for a long time, it seems odd that he'd start feeling uncomfortable or she'd start complaining now, just because they're engaged or whatever.
Before I get into the music stuff, some pictures!
Alison's breathplay fetish is still going strong.
Lolol also somebody on Tumblr made this and it brought me endless joy.
But I seriously can't even with them sometimes. SHE IS ON THE FLOOR. HE IS STANDING UP AND PULLING HER HAIR. Hnnng.
I thiiink this one is fairly recent, so they still do the shooting-with-the-guitar thing.
And this. ♥
GAH cutest ever.
Too adorable. Can't. Brain malfunctioning.
Guh.
Lol, the caption.
Right, despite the cuteness/hotness of some of those, it definitely seems like something has changed between them. The new album backs that up, too. It's fairly obvious, I think, that 'Blood Pressures' is quite different to their others. There's still something fundamentally Kills-y about it, but their older albums were so stripped-back and sparse and had this feeling of intensity and claustrophobia, and it was just these two obsessed people and a drum machine, you know? And on this album, they play other instruments (hardly, but still!) and there's a choir, and it just feels so much like they've expanded and allowed other things/people into their little world.
One of the most obvious differences to me is the inclusion of the two ballads. The Kills have done slower songs before, but these are like, actual ballads, which seems unusual to me. It also seems significant that they have one each—I'm not sure it's ever been so obvious that a particular song belonged to one of them more than the other, but with these, they sing alone. (Which is especially weird for Jamie, who almost never sings alone!) Alison's is 'The Last Goodbye', and I sort of can't quite get my head round it.
It's the last goodbye I swear
I can't rely on a dime a day love that don't go anywhere
I learned to cry for someone else
I can't get by on an odds-and-ends love that don't ever match up
I heard all you said and I took it to heart
I won't forget, I swear
I have no regrets, for the past is behind me
Tomorrow reminds me just where...
Can't quite see the end
How can I rely on my heart if I break it with my own two hands?
I heard all you said and I love you to death
I heard all you said, don't say anything
It's the last goodbye I swear
I can't survive on a half-hearted love that will never be whole
It makes sense for it to be about Jamie, about her realising that their love will never be complete and he's found Kate and maybe she needs to move on too. The line 'I can't survive on a half-hearted love that will never be whole' particularly makes me think of them, because it's like, there's SO MUCH to the love they have for each other but it's just not complete in the traditional/conventional sense, like it's romantic and sexual but they're not in love and they're not having sex. But it seems almost too in-your-face, like, I sort of can't believe she would write/sing something like this about Jamie. I feel quite resistant to the idea of them actually being aware of their deeper feelings for one another. I still feel like they're very much in denial of it.
And there are parts of it that don't quite make sense to me, anyway. The whole 'goodbye' theme is an obvious one—who is she saying goodbye to? It's not as if she and Jamie are "breaking up". And then 'I learned to cry for someone else'—I wondered if maybe that was a reference to her feelings for Jack? And I've heard people say that maybe the whole song is about Jack, which also makes a certain degree of sense. It makes sense of the 'don't ever match up' part, like she's saying what she has with Jack can't measure up to what she has with Jamie, maybe. But at the same time I sort of feel like there's almost too much love in this song for it to be about Jack, but maybe I'm just not willing to believe she feels that strongly about him? Idk, idk.
There's just something about the lyrics of this song, it's almost like it's a code or something—like I feel like it could be incredibly revealing if I could just make sense of it? Nothing quite seems to fit, but then, maybe she did that on purpose. And of course, it could be about some other man, an ex, but that just seems unlikely to me because as far as we know she hasn't had a boyfriend for quite a while, and the song is just so raw and open and full of love and pain that it must be about a very serious relationship in her life.
Jamie's ballad is called 'Wild Charms'.
To the doting boys by your side
Riding roughshod on your starless nights
To she who played concertos, foul and black
Upon my heartstrings and never looked back
What became of those wild charms?
The deep fry of the tide? The tug of the stars?
How it stirs me, how it stirs me now
To think my fire burnt them out
I was gonna say that it makes more sense to me, but I do get confused by the 'you' and 'her' referred to in the first part. Like, I sort of assume the 'doting boys' 'riding roughshod' were The Dead Weather or maybe even Discount, but I also assume that the person playing 'concertos...upon [his] heartstrings' is Alison, so then the your/she thing doesn't quite work. Unless the 'she' is Kate. I assumed Alison because of the musical reference, but considering the fact that Kate and The Dead Weather have been the two catalysts for the change in Jamie and Alison's relationship, perhaps those references would make more sense.
EITHER WAY. I feel much more sure that this one is about their relationship. I mean, again, it's clearly about a serious relationship, and Jamie has been with Kate for quite a long time now and it doesn't make sense for it to be about someone he's planning to spend the rest of his life with. He's talking about the disappearance of some sort of feeling. And it all just ties in with the way his and Alison's relationship seems to have changed and the way they seem far less sexually-charged than they used to be. And perhaps, even, it's an admission of him feeling something more than friendship for her. Like maybe he's saying that a long time ago, he wanted her, but he buried the feelings away because he couldn't deal with them—his fire burnt them out.
The lyrics of this song also tie in with the lyrics of 'DNA', which I think is really cool.
When it came to pass, glory passed me by
And fate, with a single blow, has custard-pie'd me now
True, I had my chance
True true true, I had those wild charms for you
But oh, my fire burnt them out
Your mind would never ache
When you were young and sound
The way your heart aches now
Your fears sent them all to ground
Love love love, 'til you've got enough
Dance dance dance, if you've got no love around you
Love love love, 'til you've got enough
Dance dance dance, 'til there's no one left to hound you
And we will not be moved by it, we will not be moved by it
It's the 'true, I had my chance/true true true I had those wild charms for you' that really gets me. And the entirety of both the verses, actually. They seem to be about the same sort of thing as 'Wild Charms'—missing out on a chance with somebody, and it being your own fault, and regretting it. This song, iirc, is also Jamie's, so it's almost like when he wrote the lyrics he was speaking to himself, and it has a whole different feel to it when it's Alison singing the words. It kind of makes my heart hurt.
The second verse...it's like, at the time, back when the chance was there, he didn't see it. It's like, he didn't feel that ache, that longing, back when they were 'young and sound'—i.e. the beginning of their friendship, and now his heart aches because he thinks (/knows?) he's missed that chance entirely—'glory passed [him] by'. And it's all so full of regret, like, he blames himself for that, because it was his fears and concerns that kept him from doing anything about his feelings. Because she was young, maybe, or because their relationship was too special to risk ruining. And then the rest of the lyrics seem optimistic, it's like he's saying "we won't let this change things, though, we can still be amazing together."
I guess, again, it's just odd to me that he would admit ever having those feelings for her in the first place, let alone regretting the fact that he didn't act on them. I really don't know if it's just my interpretation of their relationship, like, my resistance to the idea of them ever wanting to be a normal couple, or having normal romantic/sexual feelings for each other and wanting to get married and have babies—you know? I feel like their relationship is 100x more complicated than that and they're far too in denial (Jamie especially) to admit anything like this through song. BUT THEN WHAT ARE ALL THESE LYRICS ABOUT? They seem too significant to ignore.
There's also 'Future Starts Slow':
You can holler, you can wail
You can swing, you can flail
You can thump like a broken sail
But I'll never give you up
If I ever give you up my heart will surely fail
And after all, God can keep my soul
England, have my bones
But don't ever give me up
I could never get back up when the future starts so slow
No longing for the moonlight
No longing for the sun
No longer will I curse the bad I've done
If there's a time when your feeling's gone, I wanna feel it
You can holler, you can wail
You can blow what's left of my right mind
You can swing, you can flail
You can blow what's left of my right mind (I don't mind)
There's a time for the second best
And there's a time when the feeling's gone
But it's hard to be hard I guess
When you're shaking like a dog
This one is a little more vague to me, in that I don't fully believe it's about their relationship necessarily. But, if written by Alison, the 'England, have my bones' part suggests it might be, along with all the pleading/promising not to give each other up and to love each other no matter what. Plus, that last part—second best? To Kate, maybe? And the mentions of feelings being gone, that seems like another reference to a change in their relationship.
And fiiiinally, there was the video for 'Satellite', which included a few moments that were—well, worth making gifs of?
I honestly just spent the entire video being completely unable to deal with the way they look at each other.
It also made me want Alison/Jamie roadtrip fic.
Man, am I done? I think I might be. Can I now just cling to you all and panic about the gig? I mean, anyone else's thoughts on all this ridiculous analysis would be nice, but mostly I think I just want to cling and panic. I am excited! It's just a very panicky sort of excitement.
