The Kills - Ash & Ice

The Kills' fifth full-length album Ash & Ice

2LP black vinyl housed in a wide spine jacket with gold foil imprint

Album download included, offer subject to expiration

The Kills' Ash & Ice is the follow up to 2011's critically-lauded Blood Pressures and was five years in the making in part due to Jamie Hince's five hand surgeries, which resulted in him having to re-learn how to play guitar with a permanently damaged finger. Unlike the duo's earlier albums, which have largely been written and recorded at Key Club Studio in Benton Harbor, Michigan, the bulk of the recording for Ash & Ice took place in a rented house in L.A. and at the world famous Electric Lady Studios in NYC.

It was during Hince's recuperation from surgery that he first started sketching out what would become the songs for the album. To shake up the writing process, Hince booked a solo trip on the infamous Trans-Siberian Express for inspiration while Alison Mosshart, now residing in Nashville, Tenn., wrote some of the most affecting, poetically candid lyrics that she ever has, painting word pictures that mine the dangerous terrain between romantic obsession, prophecy and tough love.

Where previous albums had an air of detachment and emotional austerity, underpinned by an uneasy self-awareness and unexpressed anger, the 13 songs on Ash & Ice are more understated, less tempestuous and more affecting because of that, exposing the kind of push-pull you feel when you find yourself in a complicated but all-consuming relationship. Ash & Ice is The Kills at their emotionally charged, arresting best. Prepare to be slayed.

 

Side 1

Doing It To Death

Heart Of A Dog

Hard Habit To Break

Side 2

Bitter Fruit

Days Of Why And How

Let It Drop

Side 3

Hum For Your Buzz

Siberian Nights

That Love

Impossible Tracks

Side 4

Black Tar

Echo Home

Whirling Eye

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