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How Alison Mosshart's Onstage Prowl Changed Music

Sometimes you need to say โ€œfuck.โ€ Which is precisely why few songs are as cathartic to me as The Killsโ€™ โ€œFuck The Peopleโ€โ€”especially when Iโ€™m feeling furious. โ€œFuck the people,โ€ I hiss. The song, from the British-American rock bandโ€™s 2003 debut LP, Keep On Your Mean Side, is confrontational. Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince, both vocalists and guitarists in the band, sing in unison: โ€œYou want a warning / You got a warning / Bet you something I can get your mouth shut.โ€ It is terrifying. Or, if youโ€™re on the side of the brewing storm, exhilarating.

Listening to a womenโ€”any woman, reallyโ€”tell someone to fuck off is deeply satisfying. But when Mosshart does it on โ€œFuck the People,โ€ she sounds both unbothered and intimidating. I imagine her gingerly tending to a whiskey and cigarette, as though none of this really irks her at all. But this has always been the essence of The Kills and what they do well: cool, prickly indie rock, with a side of menace.

The Kills were one of a number of bands that rose to prominence in the U.S. and U.K. during the indie rock explosion of the early 2000s, earning praise for their aggressive-sounding indie rock on the 2002 EP, Black Rooster, and their 2003 debut. โ€œ[Thereโ€™s] a dark, mesmerizing power to the simplicity of songs with self-explanatory titles like “Fried My Little Brains,” “Cat Claw,” and “Kissy Kissy,” The A.V. Club wrote of Keep On Your Mean Side. โ€œBy the album’s second half, The Kills has even begun to discover a kind of delicacy that bodes well for its future.โ€ In 2008, they enjoyed a bump in popularity and visibility, thanks to the inclusion of โ€œSour Cherryโ€ on an episode of Gossip Girl, a cut from their third album, Midnight Boom, which turns 11 this month. Their relationship to the press and to success hasnโ€™t always been straightforward. โ€œThereโ€™s been an on-and-off relationship with the music press that loves us and then hates us then loves us again,โ€ Mosshart told Marc Spitz for Vanity Fair in 2011. Between Kills records from 2009 to 2015, Mosshart would go on to make three albums with The Dead Weather (a project she is still part of), a collaboration with Jack White (The White Stripes, The Raconteurs), Jack Lawrence (City and Colour, The Raconteurs), and Dean Fertita (Queens of the Stone Age), further evolving as a dynamic vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter.

In the early 00s, music journalists fawned over male musicians like Julian Casablancas and Jack White while giving considerably less airtime to the contributions of female musicians like the Yeah Yeah Yeahโ€™s Karen O, Metricโ€™s Emily Haines, Rilo Kileyโ€™s Jenny Lewis, and Whiteโ€™s own bandmate Meg White. But it seemed like nothing cut through Mosshartโ€™s leather jacket armor; her ferocious fearlessness was urgently needed then and now. Still, for all of the bellicose exorcisms in her lyrics and music, there is a vulnerability and tenderness etched into each verse and chord. Itโ€™s a contrast that is uniquely Mosshartโ€™s, one that sets her apart from any other musician of the period, and even today.

Alison Mosshart grew up in Vero Beach, Florida, hanging around skaters, reading zines, listening to Fugazi, and singing in a punk band called Discount. The Killsโ€™ origin story has been repeated ad nauseam, but the gist of the tale is this: On tour in England with her band in the 90s, while Mosshart was still a teenager, she heard Hince playing guitar in the room above hers in the building where they were both staying and felt an immediate connection. โ€œWithout seeing him or knowing him, I just knew he was the right person,โ€ Mosshart said in a 2017 interview. It was spooky and creepyโ€ฆ and maybe stalkerish but I was fucking convinced.โ€ After they had properly met, and when she was back stateside, they sent tapes back and forth to each other. They gave each other nicknames: โ€œVVโ€ for Mosshart, โ€œHotelโ€ for Hince, as the press has routinely referenced over the years. At 20, Mosshart told in Huck Magazine, she decided to move to London to work with Hince.

But thatโ€™s just how The Kills got its startโ€”not Mosshartโ€™s career in music. By the time she moved to the U.K., she had already been a professional musician for at least six years. Formed when Mosshart was only 13 years old, Discount was reportedly central to the Floridian punk scene in the early and mid-90s. By the time she was 14, the band was touring the world. โ€œWe toured everywhere, which is incredible for a punk band of our size because this was at a time where there was no Internet, and the music scene was very much word-of-mouth and fan zines; you booked tours by sending letters,โ€ Mosshart said in a 2016 Lenny Letter interview.

Few traces of Discount exist online, though you can listen to their three full-length records and some of their singles on Spotify. A few videos of live Discount shows offer glimpses of a short-haired Mosshart, jostling and jumping around in small, sweaty spaces. (In retelling her early musical years, writers called her โ€œchubby-facedโ€ and โ€œchubby-cheeked,โ€ not seeming to remember that she was quite literally a child.) Absent is her signature prowl and focus onstage, which sheโ€™d perfect early on with The Kills. But what is present is the fire that would come to define her persona in future projects.

Reporters and fans often describe women in music as โ€œbadass,โ€ which has always felt, at least to me, like a reductive way of capturing the awesome power of women who make music. Judging by how frequently it is used, it would seem that simply endeavoring to be in music makes someone a badass. But Alison Mosshart is, and it deeply pains me to use this word, a badass. She once matter-of-factly said in an interview she isnโ€™t afraid, which is likely a much better way of framing her and her work. An example of her daring: When Mosshart first moved to the U.K., she endured a lot, but still managed to take it in stride. She once described this period in her life in an interview: โ€œLots of shitty things happenedโ€”I got chased, someone tried to drag me in their car. I got mugged numerous times. But that kind of shit just brushes off you and then youโ€™re out walking on your own in the dark all by yourself again like none of it fucking happened. Thatโ€™s what being twenty is, I suppose, itโ€™s kinda feeling like youโ€™re immortal. It was all just completely emotion-fueled and beautiful and wild.โ€

Mosshart straddles the giving-no-fucks-but-very-much-givinga-fuck line, creating lyrics and sounds as rough and dark as a hard night out, but with a glimmering morning sun peeking through. Complexities of emotion and story are distilled down to simple gesturesโ€”like coughing up phlegm on โ€œCheap and Cheerful,โ€ or telephone static on โ€œNo Wow/Telephone Radio Germany.โ€ The Kills make a real commotion on their recordsโ€”clanging and moaningโ€”but there are delicate moments, too. โ€œHow 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,โ€ she sings on โ€œThe Last Goodbyeโ€ off Blood Pressures, flexing an uncharacteristic softness for someone seemingly so hardened. But thatโ€™s the point: her work and persona contain multitudes.

To watch Alison Mosshart perform is to watch a jungle cat go through the motions of a huntโ€”skulking, focused, serious. She is often, without self-parody, wearing a well-worn, beloved leopard print shirt. โ€œA great show is one I donโ€™t remember at all,โ€ she once told Nylon. โ€œI walk off and I know I went somewhere.โ€ Mosshart goes to great lengths to elevate her performance to theater. She borrows fashion aesthetics from the rock gods of yore: tight jeans, leather, and messy unkempt hair, alternately bleached out, bright pink, or a shiny raven color. She makes prolonged eye-contact with audience members before abruptly turning her head and thrashing, singing into the microphone. She stalks Hince as he furiously picks his guitar strings, charging toward him before slinking back. She looks possessed. โ€œPerforming is like a dream state,โ€ Mosshart once said. โ€œWhen you ride the wave, itโ€™s the most incredible feeling as the adrenaline is addictive and you canโ€™t recreate that feeling anywhere else. Itโ€™s a magical experience from all sides if you just let it be.โ€

As much as women were present in Aughts bands, their work always seemed eclipsed by the men in the scene. Julian Casablancas from The Strokes was celebrated for the โ€œangst and confusion in his lyrics.โ€ In a Spin cover story, Chuck Klosterman lauded Jack Whiteโ€™s contemporary spin on blues music as โ€œraw and unrehearsed and imperfect,โ€ which was why it was โ€œso fucking good.โ€ Mosshart had the brilliance to combine that restless angst and bluesy sound, while also assuming a more straightforward, and sort of frightening, approach. On โ€œMurdermile,โ€ Mosshart offers what can only be described as adversarial tauntsโ€”โ€œSpitting shit like a tire / Got your foot down and your mind down / To its last little wire / Come on! Come on!โ€โ€”as Hince offsets her ferocity, quietly singing: โ€œIt’s a train wreck / You got me on the wrong track, honey.โ€ As a duo, they complement each other, but Mosshartโ€™s caustic delivery elevates her as a singular force.

Publications compared The Kills to their indie contemporaries early onโ€”especially The White Stripes, whoโ€™d emerged a few years earlier. Reviews and reported stories often opened with a mention of The White Stripes, while puzzlingly going to great lengths to point out the differences between the two groups. In their review of Keep On Your Mean Side, Pitchfork wrote: โ€œIt’s rough times for these bluesy guy-girl garage duos, I tell ya. I mean, sure, if you’re the least bit talented you’ve got a massive hype machine working for youโ€”which isn’t a bad thingโ€”but you’ll never shake those comparisons to the band that built the boat you’re sailing. I promise not to mention [the White Stripes], maybe as a favor to The Kills, but mostly because the two bands sound nothing alike.โ€ Though the review is complimentary enough, it ends with the same smirking undertone, albeit one that is self-aware: โ€œStill, it’s a bitter reality: they’d never be getting this kind of attention if it weren’t for the White Stri– fuck!โ€

But then Mosshart went and teamed up with White. The Dead Weather released their debut, Horehound, in 2009โ€”the result of a series of impromptu jam sessions in Nashville that turned into a full-lengthโ€”and continued to release records from there, leading up to 2015 LP, Dodge and Burn, their most recent. But White took a literal backseat to Mosshart in the project, thumping on the drums behind her as she sang. And though the song writing credits suggested that songs were a group effort (for example, Mosshart wrote โ€œSo Far From Your Weaponโ€ and โ€œ60 Feet Tallโ€ along with Fertita, while White wrote โ€œI Cut Like a Buffaloโ€), reviewers often framed the album as a White โ€œside projectโ€โ€”and as a reflection of his โ€œgenius.โ€ As Pitchforkโ€™s review of Horehound explained, โ€œPerhaps Jack White’s continued dominance over contemporary blues-rock is in fact the product of some deal with the devil.โ€

The Dead Weather is actually good, for what itโ€™s worth, combining the best elements of Whiteโ€™s music (erratic lyrics and clashing, dramatic sounding chords) with the turbulent guitar work of Fertita and Lawrence. But they wouldnโ€™t be half as good without Mosshartโ€™s wild vocalsโ€”which often seem to engage in a form of aural combat with Whiteโ€”and the menacing lyrics she wrote.

The most vivid Mosshart memory I have, however, is the first time I heard The Killsโ€™ โ€œU.R.A. Fever.โ€ Of all her workโ€”both in The Kills and The Dead Weatherโ€”the Midnight Boom opener left an immediate, lasting imprint on me. โ€œWe ainโ€™t born typical,โ€ Mosshart breathed during the chorus, unconcerned and self-effacing, but with the slightest tinge of vulnerability. To me, that lyric, 11 years on from the recordโ€™s release, still feels like the perfect summation of Mosshartโ€™s brilliance as a performer: She wasnโ€™t born typical. When Mosshart sings, โ€œYou only ever had her when you were a fever,โ€ it feels like a reference to her own frenzied energy. Mosshart is too ferocious of a musician to be interchangeable with anyone else.

Sarah MacDonald is a writer in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter.

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