Truth be told, until recently I had assumed the Kills were one of the ultra-hip, slavishly dressed The ____s bands that managed to “save” rock and roll for our future children and house pets, like, seven years ago, and I had dutifully written them off as such. After a bit of research I confirmed that, yes, they seem totally Kool and the Gang (and they know it), and, eh, the Ramones wannabe jacket has got to go. Oh, and another thing: why did I write them off? It’s true that their debut Keep On Your Mean Side (2003) was pretty formulaic in its balls-out blues punk swagger, but follow-up No Wow (2005), as Peter already noted, was a genuinely licentious romp through the windblown ashes of Dry (1992) and Rid of Me (1993) that had at least some of us gripping our crotches with one hand and significant others with the remaining.

So it’s not surprising that soon-to-be-released Midnight Boom has tussled my hair enough times to coax more than a few BEST ROCK ALBUM OF THE YEAR SO FARs out of me, and “Last Day Of Magic” has a lot to do with that. If there’s any evolution from past efforts here, it’s in the sheer economy of it all: guitarist Hotel keeps his fits—all metallic sheen and moaning atrophy—to a disciplined minimum, letting VV steer the ship with her characteristically immediate vocal hooks and to-be-reckoned-with forebodings (“There’s only so much you can hide / Before I corner you”). While “Last Day Of Magic” is a far cry from the “eye of the storm” placidity VV chants about here, it also never achieves the eruption it seems to be hurtling towards, which is just as well; the Kills have built a respectable career on “little tornadoes” such as this, and “Last Day Of Magic” is as immediate and downright fun as this type of storm gets.

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