Like the best rock bands, The Kiss Offs lived fast and, in a manner of speaking, died young. After two albums and a handful of singles, the Austin-based rock band is no more. Fortunately, in appropriately mythological style, Rock Bottom sends them off in a brief, incandescent burst of jagged pyrotechnic glory.
The Kiss Offs embodied rock's most urgent excesses in the best possible way, mixing predatory sexual swagger with punk's bratty disobedience. After hearing their music, it was easy to imagine the band waking up, hung over, at 4:00 p.m. and taking the edge off by throwing hotel furniture out the window of their penthouse suite. The fact that the hard-working Kiss Offs probably never got anywhere near a penthouse suite doesn't matter; they made you believe in their hard-living rock and roll lifestyle. They also suffered for their art, racking up an impressive list of injuries during their high-energy, explosion-intensive live performances. The rock is in their blood, and they've shed blood for the rock.
Rock Bottom wisely doesn't dick with the band's trademark sound. The guitars are still sharp and blustery, their rough-edged, feedback-laden riffs melding well with the Hammond-style drone of the keyboards. More importantly, the dual vocals are as disaffected as ever; Katey Jones' flatly dispassionate, half-spoken delivery teeters on the edge of no-wave, suggesting a slightly friendlier Romeo Void, while Phillip Niemeyer smarms through his lyrics like a salacious rent boy. It's lividly engrossing stuff, teasing and taunting the listener to embrace the band's implied transgressions. However, despite the feverish nastiness of songs like "We Can Work it Out" and the noisy, lyrical violence of the farewell epic "Pleather Pantz", the Kiss Offs are capable of...well, doing stuff that sounds pretty. Jones and Niemeyer stumble into some gorgeous vocal harmonies on "Let Me Find the Good In You", and "Mmm Mmm Mmm" packs some ebullient happiness in amid its warbling guitars. There's even something about the opening riff of "The Freedom of Rock" that recalls Pere Ubu's "Final Solution", though the resemblance ends when the vocals begin.
Rock Bottom also sounds better than previous Kiss Offs releases. Turned up appropriately loud -- which is to say, as loud as you can get it -- the music is full and rich. When "Pleather Pantz" makes you feel like you've fallen in with the bad kids from the wrong side of the tracks, you won't wonder if they've dragged you to their favorite tin-walled shack to hang out. You may crank Rock Bottom with confidence.
So yes, The Kiss Offs are gone, but Rock Bottom will help make certain that they aren't forgotten in a hurry. And unlike so many rock stars of the sixties, none of The Kiss Offs are actually dead; they live on, their influence (and members) heard in a handful of new Peek-A-Boo bands. Perhaps The Kiss Offs will even return, one day, for that most ignominious of rock 'n' roll milestones, the reunion tour...but until then, Rock Bottom remains their finest (half) hour.
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