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The U.K. garage thrashers, The Kills, return from a three-year hiatus for their third studio album, “Midnight Boom,” bringing scratchy, abrasive sounds and fresh lyrics to the forefront. Unlike the White Stripes and other female-male duos, Allison “VV” Mosshart and James “Hotel” Hince turn away from the bluesy-rock archetype to lift their sound to an unsteady cool.
With their first single, “U.R.A. Fever,” Mosshart and Hince exchange sassy vocals to heighten the grainy guitar licks under sleek, laidback tones. With lyrics like, “You are a fever / You are a fever / You ain’t born typical,” spoken over a telephone dial tone, the song delivers an inventive groove befitting to their style.
Tracks like “Sour Cherry” and “Getting Down” breed high energy, mid-tempo fire-starters, providing bouncy melodies, hand claps and onomatopoeic echoes.
For bitter and atmospheric overtones, The Kills dip into slow, melancholic moods on the finale song, “Goodnight Bad Morning.” Smooth piano chords and humming guitar licks fulfill the rest of the sweet, nostalgic track.
Overall, this short but stingy album keeps the listener attentive to the band’s balance between ultra-sexy and rough indie styles. The Kills still manage their flare for erratic guitars and creative beats, adding more chemistry to an already appealing sound.

flathatnews.com

It’s taken more than a decade, but Portishead have finally come out with a new album. Kevin Courtney goes beyond the press release to discover what took these slow-groovers so long, and wonders if this is the beginning of a rebirth for Bristol’s trip-hop scene
IT’S ALWAYS the way: you’re about to interview some band or pop star, when a twitchy record company executive jumps in front of you and says: “Don’t ask about the divorce/dead rock star husband/child molestation charge/plastic surgery/Johnny Marr/gerbil.”
There’s always one question you’re not allowed to ask, and the obvious one for Geoff Barrow of trip-hop legends Portishead is, simply, why so long? It’s been 10 years since their last album, twice the time it took for The Stone Roses to engineer their second coming. But this is the one question I’m barred from asking. Have Portishead gone all Courtney Love on us?
Nah, there’s a simple reason that the monumentally slow-grooving trio are in a hurry to skirt the subject: it might take up too much precious interview time when they could be talking about music and stuff. So they’ve prepared a handy press release that addresses the thorny issue of the band’s decade-long hiatus.
It says that following a hectic four years between the release of the Mercury Music Prize-winning Dummyin 1994 and the mixing of the Live at the Roseland NYC album in 1997, beatmaster Geoff Barrow, singer Beth Gibbons and guitarist Adrian Utley “went home, emotionally and physically exhausted”.
Geoff, the intense music-obsessive whose dense beats and brooding samples gave Portishead their signature style, took a complete break from music to “try and rebuild some semblance of a home life”. No abstinence for the other two, though: Adrian, the veteran session man whose r’n'b/jazz/rock guitar style brought a hipster aesthetic to the mix, kept busy with production, soundtrack and live work.

ireland.com

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Stumping through Oregon on behalf of his wife’s candidacy, former President Bill Clinton promised the state’s voters Monday that the contest would continue through their May 20 primary.
"The way Oregon votes may determine who the Democratic nominee is going to be," Clinton told about 150 cheering senior citizens at a community center on Portland’s fringes. "It’s a big test for Democrats this year, whether everyone will get a chance to vote, and every vote will be counted."
Clinton’s two-day visit included stops in Medford, Salem and Bend and came on the heels of a sweep down the Willamette Valley by Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, who is challenging New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the presidential nomination.
Hillary Clinton herself is expected to campaign in Oregon soon, members of her steering committee said Monday, perhaps as early as next week.
In recent days, calls for Hillary Clinton to drop out intensified, as prominent Democrats worried that the Clinton-Obama contest could go all the way to the party’s convention in August, leaving the nominee only nine weeks to focus on the general election and Republican Sen. John McCain.
But the voters who swarmed the former president after his Oregon speeches, asking him to autograph everything from their driver’s licenses to yellowing posters from a 1992 appearance he made in Portland, said such calls are premature.
"Just try to take the voters away from her," sniffed Norma Schacher, 85, a retiree who came to the East Portland Community Center to hear Bill Clinton. "It will never work."
Clinton picked up the theme again during an afternoon speech at Chemeketa Community College in Salem, urging the crowd to ignore those who claim Obama has the nomination sewn up
"Don’t you believe she can’t win the nomination … because she will," Clinton said. Then, in a thinly-veiled reference to his wife’s competitor, he added: "Some people do great talks, some people take action. That’s what you want a president to do: make something good happen for America."

katu.com