2.5 stars (out of 4)The Kills write simple songs with lots of attitude, the kind that blows smoke in your face and stubs out cigarettes in your chest. Dirt, sleaze, swagger – the duo delivered on three studio albums that blended blues grind, drum-machine beats and spectral vocals that sounded like a visitation from Sister Midnight.On “Blood Pressures” (Domino)m the fourth studio album from singer Alison Mosshart and guitarist Jamie Hince, the duo adds a few twists to the formula. Mosshart, who moonlighted recently in Jack White’s Dead Weather, is a more versatile singer than ever. She puts a touch of Peggy Lee smolder into “The Heart is a Beating Drum,” and does a pretty good impression of a torch singer on “The Last Goodbye,” pouring out her world-weariness over a wan piano. Even Hince gets into the spirit of boundary-pushing with his lead-vocal turn on a wobbly psychedelic ballad, “Wild Charms.” Otherwise, it’s the Kills putting more of a pop gleam on their guitar-drums grime. The melodies are more pronounced, the lyrics more carefully enunciated. “Baby Says” tries to have it both ways, a straight-up, almost pretty pop song underpinned by a guitar that sounds like it was recorded on a defective cassette tape. But the tamer approach isn’t entirely successful and the album runs out of steam in its second half. It leaves “Blood Pressures” sounding like a more polite version of the Kills.
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Tags: Kills, Kills Blood