By special doctor dispensation, a sick vegetarian writer-type comes to convalesce at tonight's Red Meat Heart Cinema show, the third outing of a six date UK tour. Instead of a saline drip and routinely-prescribed support band we are dosed on raw film footage of several major artists in action – the Velvet Underground & Nico, Patti Smith, the Rolling Stones, Sonic Youth and many other kinds of cult mythological precursor medicine deemed appropriate to an evening with the Kills. Naturally, much of the crowd misses this intro because the bar has live celebrities.

Jamie Hince/Hotel and Alison Mosshart/VV sweep onstage in a swirl of immediacy and shadowy smoke. Having looked out into the vulturous night and assessed the situation, they respond appropriately by launching off with “U.R.A. Fever”. Its telephone dial and Karmacoma-esque lead-up talks us into the first hand-clap chorus (though naturally everyone's too cool here to actually clap) and animal growls of Hince's guitar.

This run of shows coincides with the release of the band's new single “Cheap and Cheerful”, a faster paced song whose angular drive happily punctures its audience's passive surface sheen. Demands Mosshart in lyrics: “I want you to be crazy 'cause you're boring baby when you're straight.” Which gets a response, if 'being crazy' extends to crazily taking pictures, which is what most people seem to be doing. Nor can we blame them, obviously: this duo is so goddamn picture friendly, a blessing of perfectly thrown shapes, a gift to your camera. With smoke.

The screen continues to throw things up from the film some of us watched earlier, adding to the great stage atmosphere and neatly framing the inspirational origins of many of the new songs on Midnight Boom, the Kills third album. “Last Day of Magic” is where the uniquely tense Hotel/VV dynamic is given finest expression, the two “parties ending” centre stage like “the man with the broom” to “the dust of the room” in lyrics charged with passions like “little tornadoes” and “little hurricanoes”. Great stuff and this audience is definitely cornered.

Of older songs, “Love is a Deserter” gets perhaps the strongest response of the evening and no surprise. Its sinfully dark rhythm and injunction to “get the guns out” is reminder to new and long-serving fans alike that the Kills were well cool long before the paparazzi picked up on the fact. Tonight the song feels like a deal closer, but they have other ideas, bringing things to an acute finish with the final statement of the new album, “Goodnight Bad Morning”. Its soft pace and buzzing guitar string familiarity belies a powerful rising inner momentum, taking us out with the death of a thousand lapping waves. After which, healthy carnivores and sick vegetarians alike can wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment: “What a beautiful state we're in.” - Alderson