The Kills'
Fried My Little Brains single presents one of the gutsiest-sounding tracks from their debut album,
Keep on Your Mean Side, and backs it with two new tracks that emphasize the loose, raw sound that made the band so exciting in the first place. While releasing a poppier or prettier track from the album, such as "Cat Claw" or "Wait," might have been a more obvious move, "Fried My Little Brains" showcases the churning rhythms and tandem guitars and vocals that define the Kills' sound. Fans of the band since
Black Rooster will be especially pleased by the single's B-sides, "Jewel Thief" and "Sugar Baby"; both of these tracks are somewhat of a return to the off the cuff sound of that EP. "Jewel Thief" mixes a tapping, telegraph-like rhythm with an urgently strummed acoustic guitar and
VV and
Hotel's carelessly sexy vocals into a galloping song that could indeed soundtrack the getaway from a heist. "Sugar Baby," meanwhile, is a darker, droning epic that might have the best use yet of the band's twinned vocals. While it's in keeping with the sound the Kills polished on
Keep on Your Mean Side, it's also more passionate and animated than most of that album, which occasionally felt trapped in an overly stylized and overtly influenced pose.
Fried My Little Brains finds them breaking free of that tendency, and ironically enough coming closer to the greatness of the bands that inspired them by not following their examples so closely.