The Holy Kiss — Shot Love on a Back Line
The Holy Kiss are a trio out of the San Francisco area who specialize in grimy blues based rock, filtered through a bit of a Nick Cave vibe. So it makes sense that a label named after a Birthday Party song have decided to lend their name to this release.
Aside from the Cave influence, there are also signposts of roots-rock greats the Gun Club. Nick Cave and Jeffrey Lee Pierce in the past have framed their lyrical subject matter around American Gothic tales of depravity and religion, one of the points where Shot Love on A Back Line differs somewhat.
There are religious references on the track Mortician's Suit Drag, but for the most part the album reads as a concept album about a guy who got spurned by his girlfriend, and has the blues, dammit. The music sometimes sounds a hell of a lot like a Birthday Party imitation, especially on the aforementioned Morticians Suit Drag,Black, Etc. and Shot Love on a Back Line, which include bass stabs, staccato guitar and dramatic sing-speak vocals redolent of Nick Cave's former band.
The band does slow it down, and takes the intensity down a notch on Gymnopedies: III. Lent and Mr. Bones. The former is a tasteful interpretation of a Satie piece which leads nicely into the latter track which is a mellow piano driven old-time dancehall track. Nick Ott's piano and keyboard work over the course of the album is exemplary.
Vocals and guitar are handled by the way Goth named Matty Rue Morgue. The fact that Morgue only plays slide guitar tends to get a bit tiresome over the course of this set, especially since his style of attack varies little from track to track. The vocals are appropriately pained a lot of the time, considering the fact that most of these songs are about love gone wrong, and the evil woman who brought about all of this misery. Morgue's "woe is me" attitude gets a bit numbing after a while, which for me made this album less than pleasant after a few spins.
However, for those of you who have recently been dumped by your girlfriend for another guy, and you're pissed and hurt, Shot Love on A Back Line is just what the doctor ordered.