Frock rock five - Killer tunes

○○○○●

IT'S a mystery to me how The Kills manage to come across so aloof yet so intriguingly smutty.

Heaven knows, if I could do it, I would - I only seem to manage arrogant and annoyingly childish.

However Midnight Boom, the trans-atlantic pair's third long-player, is effortlessly dirty as a mudwrestler yet remains cool as a frozen cucumber.

American singer Alison Mosshart's Karen O-esque vocals drip over Brit guitarist Jamie Hince's gritty, no frills guitar work throughout the album as if the pair could at any moment down tools and get both slapping and tickling.

No wonder then that the half of the group that is Hince has bagged himself a supermodel in the form of Kate "musician, you say" Moss.

Midnight Boom has also had the critics drooling, only over tracks like Cheap And Cheerful, Tape Song and URA Fever, and is set to deservedly explode into the mainstream to boot.