Alison Mosshart one half of The Kills, is back with “It Ain’t Water”, her second solo single and video for “It Ain’t Water,” a more measured and moodier track, visually it’s locked into a still frame of a room with Mosshart dancing and swaying to the slow-churned croon. Self-isolated in her Nashville home, Alison Mosshart is happy she still has her landline phone. She’s not getting rid of it any time soon. During a pandemic, you never know what kind of archaic resources might come in handy. It’s not so much a backup tool for communication, but more a piece of nostalgia as everyone reverts back to their roots. “I’m never letting this go,” she says. “It’s wonderful. It’s really a joy to talk to anybody right now. I love it when my phone rings now. We’re all reverting back to our junior high, teenage selves when we used to sit in our bedrooms on the landline and talk to our girlfriends and love every minute of it.”
Following the Covid-19 lockdown, Mosshart finally has some down time—to talk, think, drink wine (lots of wine), and write. “Normally, I don’t have a minute,” says Mosshart
Alison Mosshart wrote the new song last year with Alain Johannes (Queens of the Stone Age, PJ Harvey). She says of working with Johannes, “Working with Alain on “It Ain’t Water” was a blast. He’s such a talent and such a kind person. His mind is wide open. He understands and sees the beauty in imperfection, magic moments, accidents – the soulful human stuff, and the spirited super-human hard to explain stuff that makes a song great. Working with him was an honour, and also, hot damn he can play any instrument like a champ… like he invented the instrument himself. Alain Johannes Is music. More conceptual and planned out, Mosshart says “It Ain’t Water” was easier to pull together since it has very few edits. In brainstorming the video, Mosshart wanted to get the concept in her head on screen, capturing some kind of mirror image approach. “How was I going make it creepy looking, like I’m watching myself in my window?” she says.
“it Ain’t Water” is Mosshart’s second solo outing, arriving after last month’s debut track “Rise”. The melancholic country ballad arrives with another visual created and edited entirely by Mosshart. Mosshart has had time to dig into an archive of songs she’s been writing throughout the past decade. Always laser focused on The Kills, her work with Jack White and The Dead Weather, and other collaborations, all along her 20-year career, Mosshart has been filing away songs that she’s never recorded as a solo artist. “It Ain’t Water” wrote itself in one sitting. “I love when things just magically fall into your lap like that and you’re just in a perfect mood, and it just happens so easily. I wish I had a moment like that every day.”
“Rise” might have been something extracted from The Kills, but has a different coat of lacquer. First written in London in 2013, when Mosshart says she was “missing someone badly,” she had the essence of the song, but put the finishing touches on it when approached for the series. After sending the track to them, stripped down and acoustic, they had the characters do a version of the song, and then circled back to Mosshart to record the song for the series finale and recorded it at the end of 2019 in Los Angeles with Lawrence Rothman (Kim Gordon, Marissa Nadler).
“I got the opportunity to go into a studio and realize that song in the way that I wanted,” says Mosshart. “I’m so glad I got to do that, because I wouldn’t have recorded it otherwise.”
Locked down, Mosshart also started learning video editing and produced her first music video for “Rise” which she compiled using footage from a lowrider car show from 2019 and her own visage. Mosshart wants to dig deeper into her dossier of songs, but her first love is her first band. She’s always had songs that she never thought fit anywhere, so she kept them filed away. “There’s The Kills world or The Dead Weather world, and then there’s this stuff, says Mosshart. “I would love to do more, and I would love a reason to do more.
Check out the original by The Punks 1973, New music from the HBO series VINYL released each week. Mosshart is working through her creative distractions, alone. This summer she will re-release her book “CAR MA” through White’s Third Man Records. Originally released in limited edition, the book is a love letter to automobiles via her collection of photography, art, and writing, and will have an accompanying spoken word audio. “I asked them if I could do spoken word record, which turned into the most crazy thing,” says Mosshart. “It could be a career ruiner, it’s so bizarre.”
Alison Mosshart’s “It Ain’t Water” single is out now. It’ll be released on 7″ vinyl on 31st July with “Rise”,
The Fat Angel Sings 