The Kills are an art rock band with the emphasis on rock and their music belongs in this tradition which takes its first inspiration from the raw blues guitar of the Mississippi Delta.

Add the fuzz of The Kinks, the drone of The Velvet Underground and the riffs of Led Zeppelin to the contemporary edge of the band's labelmates Franz Ferdinand.

Set the rhythm chugging with a drum machine and don't bother with the bass. Mix it sleazily together with the voice of PJ Harvey and you'll have something like The Kills' sound.

The duo - "Hotel" (otherwise known as UK guitarist Jamie Hince) and singer "VV" (Alison Mosshard, formerly of Florida-based pop punk outfit Discount) - formed in 2001 and released their garage-rocking debut LP, Keep On Your Mean Side, in 2003.

Extensive touring in the UK and US and support slots to the likes of Franz, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Primal Scream have given them a reputation for delivering low-down and dirty songs with an arresting, sexually-charged performance.

To command big stages, the pair's strategy is to draw the audience into the intensity of their on-stage antics, and just how much of The Kills' show was rock theatre and how much was spontaneous chemistry between the two was difficult to determine at Concorde 2.

In the Helter Skelter riffs of Push A U, they faced each other like demented lovers, their movements loaded with hidden meaning and their microphone stands locked together.

Hotel spent most of the time staring into the distance, twitching and mouthing like a psychiatric patient who believes - almost correctly - he's Keith Richards.

VV has added the moves of Patti Smith to the looks of Chrissie Hynde back when she was a young Pretender, replying in call-and-response fashion to Hotel's vocals: "The kids wanna f*** and fight, in the basement."

The boy-girl band playing raucous blues-rock is a format successfully established by The White Stripes but despite their exhilarating blast, it is hard to imagine Hotel and VV entertaining stadiums of fans as Jack and Meg now do.

The Kills are probably happy with cult status. Nevertheless they left me wondering what kind of band they would be if they replaced the cool minimalism of their drum machine with a full-on rock band to accompany their full-on rock attitude.