Stylish, sexy, and simple, the nouveau-garage clatter of the Kills has magnificently sat on a line between base and brilliant. They've traded in a bluesy, overdriven sleaze that's served many a duo well in recent years, blurring the edges between their tandem vocals, staccato guitars, and vintage drum machines. On albums such as Keep on Your Mean Side (2003) and No Wow (2005), they managed to take a classic rock template and turn it into something more modern and audibly dangerous. Midnight Boom pushes those edges even further, and has its own kind of swagger that stands apart from anything they've done so far. Despite hammering on its titular phrase like it's a lip gloss for sale, opener "U.R.A. Fever" manages to sound like an XTRMNTR outtake that substitutes seduction for violence, with a slinky backbeat made from equal parts purring bass and jarring phone noise.

Many Kills reviews suggest romance in between the two principals-- Alison "VV" Mosshart and Jamie "Hotel" Hince; the masterfully sustained tension of their previous music practically invited the guesswork. But in comparison, Midnight Boom is limp. The album's beat-heavy inclinations are supposedly inspired by playground chants (specifically a film documentary called Pizza Pizza Daddio), which is easy to pick out from handclaps and martial drumbeats that run through almost every track here. But that same inspiration extends to the sing-song vocal melodies, and much of the lyrics. Now, lyrically, the Kills never had to do any heavy lifting; so long as the words sounded vaguely sexy and/or badass, they fit perfectly. However, the tawdry cheerleader chanting of "Cheap and Cheerful" quickly move past intriguing to inane, and the wordless chorus of "Getting Down" recalls all the inspiration and verve of the Greg Kihn Band. They just don't write 'em like that anymore, and with good reason.

The saving grace of Midnight Boom is the Kills' desire to break these songs open and see how they work, what makes them tick. The beat-first approach is just window dressing on tracks like "Cheap and Cheerful" (despite some production help from Armani XXXchange of Spank Rock; maybe the remix will fare better), but others like "Tape Song" jump from coy and insinuating to the album's most blistering chorus. Throughout, Mosshart's vocals are fuller and reflect more character than before. On one of the best rock songs I've heard so far this year, "Last Day of Magic" trades the stiff pinball plink of its verses with a tease towards catharsis on a tantalizing two-chord chorus that gets a little longer with each return, until it's finally revealed unmolested as the song's melodic anchor in maybe the last half-minute. By the time you get the full impression of the song, it's over. It's a great trick of rearranging that pulls back the curtain dramatically, but nearly every other song on Midnight Boom seems to be waiting for this kind of moment, losing it to a pile on the cutting-room floor.