Gig review: The Kills

WHILE the weird ritual of pint-chucking at a gig is meant as a means of showing your enthusiastic enjoyment, it's easy to see why musicians might be irritated or even outraged by it. Congratulations to the Kills' guitarist Jamie Hince, then, who took it upon himself to call out one perpetrator here. "Don't be a f***ing coward," he barked, "You come up here and play the guitar." A guy who was either guilty or desperate to get on stage owned up, and was handed Hince's guitar and left alone, his swagger doused under a crescendo of boos and half a dozen flying pints before he was ushered from the building for his own safety.

It was a priceless moment which shaved only a little of the momentum from what had been a first-class rock'n'roll show. Although Hince and singer Alison Mosshart's black-clad, cooler-than-thou image and the fact he's a tabloid focus as Kate Moss's fianc might have led to accusations of over-hype in the past, the pair seem to be emerging as the enduring gothic punk band they've always threatened to become.

Against a leopard-print backdrop and a stark, atmospheric light show, their highlights included the minimal guitar grind of U.R.A. Fever, the Brechtian surge of Satellite and wasted piano ballad The Last Goodbye.

There was also a surprising Ramones-style cover of Dawn Penn's You Don't

Love Me (No, No, No) and a blazing burst of punk-rock angst in Fried My Little Brains. The anger is in their earlier material, the innovation in their latest, and their set since recent album Blood Pressure has finally become a rewarding mixture of styles and pacing.