Ragged edges of romance

The Kills are an edgy rock duo from London who make music so sexy and unsettling it can make you sweat on a cold night.

The guitar lines are often as startling as an explosion in a minefield and the lyrics feel ripped from a therapist’s journal. It’s music tailor-made for one of those tense moments in “The Sopranos.”

“Once in a while, you’ve got to burn down your house, keep the dreaming alive,” singer Alison Mosshart declared in one song during a smoldering performance Tuesday at the Troubadour that made it clear the Kills are one of rock’s most exciting new arrivals.

The Kills -- not to be confused with the more mainstream pop-rock band the Killers -- are often mentioned alongside the White Stripes because both are duos and have strong blues elements in their sound. But the Kills deal in a much narrower emotional range, which could hurt them in the long run if the tales of love-hate relationships begin wearing thin.

There was no sign of the Kills running out of passion or ideas Tuesday, which made the group’s 45-minute performance, among other things, a relief. In a period when so many acclaimed bands, including the Strokes and the Hives, have had trouble living up to the promise of debut or breakthrough albums, the Kills improve upon their promising 2002 debut, “Keep on Your Mean Side,” in almost every way in their second CD.

“Mean” brought together enticingly some of rock’s darkest influences -- from the teasing mystery of the Velvet Underground to the neurotic tension of the Jesus and Mary Chain to the desperate outcries of PJ Harvey. In the new “No Wow,” due in March from Rough Trade/RCA, the pair continues to explore those emotional strains, but the songs are more finely tailored, both in their melodic appeal and thematic clarity.

“If I’m so evil, why are you satisfied?” Mosshart, who goes by the stage name VV, sings tauntingly in “Rodeo Town,” a country-tinged tune that defines much of the psychological in-fighting running through the Kills’ tales of romantic contradiction and complexity. While that song wasn’t in Tuesday’s set, the duo performed other songs from the new CD -- including the stormy “Love Is a Deserter” and the melodic “The Good Ones” -- that are so addictive they could become staples of alt-rock and college radio.

For all the urgency of the music, Mosshart and Jamie Hince, who uses the name Hotel, started off Tuesday’s performance in surprisingly businesslike fashion.

They swear they aren’t a couple in private life, but they looked awfully connected on stage -- a contrast of images reminiscent of, say, fresh-faced Ali MacGraw and tough guy Steve McQueen.

He was a bit intimidating in his leather jacket and serious manner as he stood at the left side of the stage, creating all sorts of wondrous sounds from his guitar-effect devices and a drum machine. Standing several feet away, she seemed as polite and unthreatening as a hymnal-holding singer in a church choir.

As the set unfolded, however, both became more animated -- and so drawn to each other that they began to act out the obsessions in the music.

Hince stomped his feet and shook the guitar violently, searching for more intensity in the music. Mosshart couldn’t clutch the microphone any more tightly if she were holding onto a ledge while dangling off a 30-foot balcony. Her long hair covered her face as she sang of betrayals and desire. By the two-thirds mark in the set, they were at the same microphone shouting into each other’s faces -- as if competing to be the more persuasive.

At the end, the Kills created so much tension on stage that you wondered if Hince wasn’t going to release some of it in the time-honored tradition of smashing his guitar. Instead, in a move that goes all the way back in rock to Jimi Hendrix, he dropped to his knees, holding the guitar in front of him like a giant phallic symbol as Mosshart lay in front of him, her body almost twitching with sexual energy.

Something elusive about the striking scene underscored the mysteries in the music. There’s no clear sense of who is in control in these songs. Hince and Mosshart, who co-write them, have merged their personalities so fully in the music that they become one.

Similarly, you didn’t know as Mosshart lay in front of Hince if her movements represented the ultimate act of surrender or seduction. It’s a question that stuck long after the Kills left the stage.

Backstage following an afternoon sound check Tuesday, Hince and Mosshart sat in the club’s lounge and seemed pleased with the new album. They are aware of all the disappointing follow-up albums from other groups but said they didn’t feel pressure to live up to expectations.

“All the praise and attention we got with the first album was terrifying in a way,” Hince said. “I hated the idea that I knew all these people were waiting for the album because I didn’t want that to influence the music. I didn’t want to make music for other people in that way because the next step is making music for people who work at record companies and then for people who work at radio stations. Once you start down that path, you end up making music that sounds like everybody else.”

As Tuesday’s show demonstrated, the Kills did shut out the rest of the world in the new songs. They simply dug deeper into their own emotional battlefield.

Robert Hilburn, The Times’ pop music critic, can be reached at Robert.hilburn@latimes.com.