The Kills are releasing a collection of B-sides and rarities, “Little Bastards.” It’s always fascinating to think about a band via its drafts and little left-handed sketches. In the interviews about this collection, Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince talked about how some of the songs on “Little Bastards” were basically written in order to fill up a CD single—industry conventions meant they needed to have backing songs in order to have a viable/valid single release. So some of these songs were made because the band was compelled, in a sense, to make them. And Mosshart and Hince both say that a lot of these tracks are songs they loved, and would have worked on more, maybe polished for an album, but there wasn’t enough time, or they didn’t fit with their plans. You can hear on “Little Bastards” that there were long stretches when they must have been in a rich vein of form, because a lot of these songs match the quality of songs that appeared on their LPs. “Superpowerless,” “Kiss the Wrong Side,” “Raise Me” (above), “Night Train,” “London Hates You” (with that “Be My Baby” beat), “Blue Moon” and more have such a classic, precisely Kills feel—tossed-off rough gems.
One of the most revealing things about “Little Bastards” is the selection of covers included. There are a few early rock and blues songs, like you might expect from the Kills, but there’s also a cover of Jonathan Fire*Eater’s “Search for Cherry Red,” one of that band’s best songs. I never thought of there being any sort of aesthetic relationship between the Kills and Jonathan Fire*Eater, but it becomes so clear when you hear this cover. Both bands project an attitude of hard decadence, like hedonists that also get into a lot of fights, but they express it in different ways. Jonathan Fire*Eater’s songs ave the vibe of getting expensively wrecked, whereas with the Kills, it’s always a little bit grimier. The Kills’ take on “The Search for Cherry Red” replaces the original bedrock organ with an industrial pulse and Hince’s slangy guitar. Mosshart and Hince sound exhausted and pained when they sing. The original song sounds like a weird family drama, a fucked-up anecdote, and the Kills version sounds far more sinister, like something you don’t want to hear about at all.