Away from the plethora of column inches and the crushingly inevitable forecasts of megastardom that follow, let's look at the facts about The Kills.
There are two of them: Alison Mosshart, former singer in Californian minor league pop-punkers Discount, and Jamie Hince, previously of indie hopefuls Scarfo. Mosshart now goes by the name VV, while Hince calls himself Hotel. And the two of them together make the most unholy racket with only the aid of guitars and a drum machine.
Fresh from a tour supporting fellow critical darlings the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the spotlight is now falling entirely on The Kills. Here in London's most poorly-ventilated venue, the hip young things and media tarts are here to check out their credentials.
But what they're probably not expecting is to see the duo doing their own soundcheck. And it seems nobody has actually realised that: one minute they're tuning up, the next the drum machine has kicked into life, Hotel is cranking out riffs at a rate of knots and the audience are suddenly forced to abandon their conversations mid-sentence.
Their mics placed at angles to each other and to the audience, the sexual tension between the two verges on the indecent. While Hotel gyrates and bobs, digging into his repertoire of dirty blues riffs, VV tosses her hair back, chain-smokes and lets rip a howl somewhere between Patti Smith, early PJ Harvey and Chan "Cat Power" Marshall. No prizes for guessing what makes up the bulk of their record collection: early blues, prime Rolling Stones and The Velvet Underground are all pillaged and reshaped.
And while 'Fuck The People' stomps along like a lumpen version of Canned Heat's 'On The Road Again' and the aimless 'Monkey 23' seems to drift on for days, when they hit their stride, as on 'Black Rooster', 'Cat Claw' and 'Kissy Kissy', The Kills offer a compelling mix of voyeurism allied to musical carnage.
It's a messy music, the aural equivalent of waking up alone in a dingy bed, in soiled sheets, having thrown-up the previous night's consumption of intoxicating substances. And while some of their songs fail to take-off, there are signs that this duo could force themselves to the vanguard of this - ahem - 'New Rock Revolution' given time. Forget t.A.T.u. and Kylie, in 2003 The Kills are the only artists offering 21st century sex and longing set to music.
It ain't pretty, but then the true blues never have been.
