The Killers
“I don’t have a quote for you. I’m not Al.” – Joe Feds
“Nice mustache, douchebag.” – Jason Lee
Albums Reviewed:
Blasting out of Las Vegas, The Killers blew up and became the biggest thing since sliced bread on the strength of the eighties revival and a few cool singles back in 2004, even though the rest of Hot Fuss wasn’t all that much to look at. They returned last fall with Sam’s Town, which Brandon Flowers kept trying to compare to Bruce Springsteen every time he got the chance even though absolutely no one was buying it, principally because the album is a step down from Hot Fuss, which wasn’t even that good to begin with. I find the Killers distinctly mediocre, and I don’t feel like writing a long intro paragraph, so I’m gonna stop now and move onto the lineup, although I will say Brandon Flowers has a marginally better voice than Geddy Lee.
Lineup! From left to right in your photo above are guitarist Dave Keuning, drummer Ronnie Vannucci, Flowers (and his crap mustache and KFC tie), and bassist Mark Stoermer. I looked these names up 5 minutes ago.
And, onto the reviews!
Hot Fuss (2004)
Rating: 6
Best Song: “Smile Like You Mean It”
I guess it was only a matter of time before one of these new critical darling garage bands came along that was into New Order and Duran Duran and slapped goofy eighties synths all over everything. We’ve already had the one that totally rules (the Strokes) and the one that sounds like Joy Division (Interpol) and the one that also kinda sounds like Joy Division but is also smarmy and Scottish and into disco (Franz Ferdinand) and the one with no originality at all (Jet…well, most of these bands, actually) and the one with the lead singer who desperately wants to be Mick Jagger even though he’s Swedish (the Hives) and the one that completely, totally blows (many, many bands not reviewed on this site…though these guys are the worst of the bunch I’ve given a fair shot so far) and the one the critics say is influenced by the Velvet Underground even though they’re not, at all (every goddamn one). If you wanna chuck the Darkness or the Arcade Fire or whoever in there, too, even though they’re about as “garage” as Sigur Ros, knock yourself out. The more bands better than the Killers, the merrier.
Oh, but I kid. The Killers are OK, and that’s actually high praise coming from me, because I thought these guys sucked total ass about three months ago. Why? Well, “Somebody Told Me” is one of the worst singles released this year from a genre I’m not automatically biased against (which ofcourse leaves out all rap, pop-punk, nu-metal, rap-metal, MTV computerized pop, “smooth” R&B and VH1 whore vanilla bullshit music and leaves in almost nothing). It sucks. It sucks and I hate it and it sucks. It’s just annoying. Sure, I like the “paaaaaaace yourself for meeeeee!” bridge there, but the rest is just annoying, ugly horse manure with stupid keyboards. And it’s not the only song here that totally blows, either. No, see, because the Killers fancy themselves some sort of stylish art-rock connoisseurs, both “Andy, You’re a Star” and the closer “Everything Will Be Alright” are these slow, plodding, synth-based, “moody” dirges that would sound great if the band had any idea what they were doing but, alas, suck (special props to the “Hey, shut uuuuup! Hey, shut uuuuuup! Yeah!” lyric in the former, easily the worst single moment on this record). Unless said band is called Interpol, any time one of these new garage band dudes tries to do anything slow or moody or arty, they fall flat on their face. I want short, clean, crisp, and catchy from you, goddammit!
OK, so now
that I’ve elucidated how and where the Killers suck, let me introduce them and
eventually, maybe, describe the instances where they don’t suck. Although all their influences are metrosexual, dancey British 80’s
bands like the aforementioned Duran Duran and New
Order and the Smiths (who aren’t dancey at all, but
bear with me), the Killers are not from across the pond, but instead from
However, this band is pretty good at using their objectively annoying musical bag of tricks to create some nice dramatic flourishes and surprisingly effective tunes. The first two here, “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine” and “Mr. Brightside,” threaten to suck during their messily produced and melodically mediocre verses (the only audible non-percussion musical instrument in the former is the popping bass line (which is actually very good) and I swear Flowers doesn’t attempt to hit a second note with his voice until the chorus in the latter), but insert BIG, EFFECTIVE dramatic swwwwwwwwwoops in the choruses and send the listener home happy. Production problems and musical illiteracy can be overcome very easily if a band knows how to write a hook, and both “Jenny was a friend of miiiine!” and “Open up my eeeeeeaaaaaaager eeeeeeeyyyyyyyes…’cause I’m Mr. Briiiiiightside!” both qualify as monster melodies. The chorus hook to “Smile Like You Mean It” may not be quite so strong, but the fact that the song has some musical tastiness elsewhere (Oh! Love that intro! Oh! Interesting verses there!) means that anyone who doesn’t nominate it for “best song” is either a moron or charmed by the simple, upbeat, fun, catchy “Change Your Mind,” tucked away in the middle of side 2 as an afterthought because it doesn’t have the dramatic histrionics of the songs these guys have chosen to release as singles. Except for that goofy, artsy bridge that honestly confuses me, it’s probably the only song here that sounds like something written by a “garage band” and not a stupid Duran Duran knockoff crossed with a decent garage band. The dramatic flourishes are what makes this album entertaining, yes, but sometimes those dramatic flourishes fail (witness the giant chorus of gospel singers that totally fuck up the ending of the otherwise very enjoyable “All These Things I’ve Done” and the plastic horns and “heavenly” backing synths in the corny “Believe Me, Natalie”). There has never been anything wrong with a simple, catchy rock song. Too bad there’s only one of them here. And finally, to stave off any “did you forget X song?” emails, let me say “On Top” is passably OK and has horrible lyrics and Flowers’ falsetto vocal affection in “Midnight Show” totally ruins an otherwise not-bad song. Which leaves a grand total of ONE SIMPLE, CATCHY ROCK SONG ON THE RECORD, bee-atch.
Honestly, I’m starting to regret giving this album even a rating as high as 6, but four songs here rule and large parts of a number of others are fine ‘n’ dandy, so I’ll stick with it. The band has definite skills at writing catchy hooks that stick in your head. They just need to write more of them, and they need better damn production. It’s not like it’s that hard to make big, dramatic records with keyboards on them sound layered and distinct instead of mucky. Interpol does exactly that, and blow these fuckers out of the water, if you don’t mind my saying. They also have a habit of inserting little touches that are just annoying, like the vocal thing I mentioned in “Midnight Show” and that damn chorus of gospel singers, which was just a HORRENDOUS idea. But enough good moments here to lead me to slap it with a rating equal to the most recent release by 3 Doors Down, so they should be, um, proud of that.
Sam’s Town (2006)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “For
Reasons Unknown”
One side-effect of having this
website unexpectedly last so damn long is that it seems like a new album I feel
obligated to review comes out like every two weeks. Would I give two shits about the Killers and
their new album if I hadn’t reviewed their first two years ago? Like hell I would. And I only reviewed that one because my
former roommate burned me a copy and said “BD, check this out” (he calls me BD;
also, his 300-pound Shrek ogre friend calls me “BJD” despite the fact that
there is not a single “J” anywhere in my name.
I feel you need to know these things).
So here we are. And it doesn’t
help the Killers’ cause that in the two years between albums they (and more
specifically Brandon Flowers) became pompous pricks. Really, you’re comparing your
eighties-revival indie-synth-rock band’s new album to
Bruce Springsteen, are you? I don’t even
consider myself a fan of Bruce Springsteen, but that’s still a little asinine,
especially when the only thing that reminds me of Mr. Bruce is that “He's with
the hippie in the park, coming over the dark” line from “The River is Wild”
that sounds like “Blinded By the Light” for complete fucking retards. And why does
Listen, this is a very limited band. They’re not a bad band, and they can usually chip in 4 or so real solid hooks per album, which is nice, but that’s really about all they’re good for. Thus, when I started hearing that Sam’s Town was gonna be the Killers’ grand, bombastic statement on America and saw that it featured song titles like “Bling (Confessions of a King)” and deemed it necessary to have an “Enterlude” and an “Exitlude,” pardon me if I was pessimistic. And while I recognize the grand sweep of the chorus hook in “When You Were Young” (seriously, the Killers are pretty good at coming up with those kinds of things), why none of the other three band members slapped Brandon upside the head and called him a pretentious fucking moron the moment they first heard the line “He doesn’t look a thing like Jeeeeesus!” is beyond me. My favorite songs by these guys are always the lower-key ones (except maybe “Mr. Brightside,” but compare that to the ridiculous one with the gospel chorus and the faux-wild west video with the fake facial hair and then tell me which one is lower-key), and “When You Were Young” is certainly not one of these. Come to think of it, the number of songs on this bloated cumshot of an album you could describe as “low key” consist of the 20-second long “Enterlude” and absolutely nothing else, and, as you may have guessed, that’s a problem. The guitarist hasn’t gotten any more interesting since Hot Fuss, and while I appreciate the better production on this album and its result that the bulk of the musical background does not sound like an undifferentiated, amorphous blob, the Killers have accomplished this trick by frequent use of synthesizers and other bullhicky (strings, an occasional horrendous horn chart) that do nothing but make these sometimes-decent, sometimes-not little rock songs into BIG, LOUD statements of purpose when sometimes they’d really be better served as just little rock songs. Ofcourse, there’s always the possibility that these songs are actually crap and the huge production makes them listenable, but I’ve made my decision and changing my mind now would show weakness. We can’t let the terrorists win, people.
The first
half of the album is actually not bad, like a more consistent version of Hot Fuss without the 2 or 3 great
songs. There are occasional
cringe-worthy moments (like the “I see Lon-don!
I see Sam’s Town!” chant in the opening title track…christ,
what were they thinking?), but the Killers’ ability to write nice, catchy rock
hooks hasn’t deserted them, and the bulk of the first six tracks on this record
are decidedly decent (even “When You Were Young”). One thing “Bling
(Confessions of a King),” “For Reasons Unknown,” and “Read My Mind” all have that I truly appreciate is drive.
My Name is Earl back there on the skins works up a nice, honking 4/4
beat underneath the big hooks, and it’s always nice to feel some rock from a rock band, you know? I especially like “For Reasons Unknown,” with
a great hard rock chugga-chugga intro that fools you
into thinking maybe the Killers aren’t a bunch of metrosexual
freaks, plus both the insistent high piano notes and synth
line in the chorus go along with the
rock instead of murking up the rock and turning it
into mush like so many of the other “touches.”
An added positive quality is that Brandon keeps his voice in a
relatively low register most of the time, meaning the song (at least until the
end) is mostly free from the off-key squeals and yelps so prevalent on the rest
of the record. I think I made fun of
Starting with “Uncle Jonny” (who, apparently, did cocaine), the album loses me (not that it really had me to begin, but I was at least on board with the band’s still being pretty decent). Starting a song with a horrible-sounding bombasto-chorus yelp the line “COOOOOME WIIIIIITH MEEEEEEEE!!!” is never a good idea, but that’s compounded by the silly keyboard line, ass horn chart that sounds like a cruise ship lounge band, recurrence of the chorus, crap synth-only break…oh, and how about the spoken call-and-response “no, I never had soul…” part? I guess what I’m trying to say is that “Bones” is an atrocity and easily the worst Killers song I’ve yet to hear. Going slow and moody with string overdubs (“My List”) was probably not the best idea either. At least “Exitlude” is pretty. Then again, it is called “Exitlude.” There are also some other songs, but, really, do you care?
The reason I’ve been so unnecessarily mean towards an album I’m only marking as “mediocre or slightly below” is because loud, bombastic, pretentious mediocrity is a lot easier to make fun of than quiet, unassuming mediocrity. The Killers are a thoroughly average band, but they think they’re god’s gift to music. The consequences of such delusion are often quite funny, and Sam’s Town is no exception.
Sawdust (2007)
Rating: 5
Best Song: “Shadowplay”
So you can tell how much of a crap I give about a band from how long it takes me to review something new they put out. This doesn’t necessarily mean the best bands always get reviewed first (case in point: the quick turnaround I have whenever something new trickles out from the Weezer camp), just that the ones that interest me do. Sometime in 2007 the Killers put out a 70+-minute collection of outtakes, alternate versions, and live tracks, and the moment I heard this bit of information it was a mortal lock that I’d review it in roughly a year, and so here we are. This kind of release is something you do if you’re, I dunno, Radiohead or something. You know, if people are actually clamoring for you to do so. Who’s staying up at night pining for over an hour of Killers rarities? They’ve only released two albums! And neither of them is even good! They have a couple of catchy singles, whoop-de-doo. No one cares. So their drummer looks like Jason Lee from My Name is Earl, their singer has taken to looking like a young Col. Sanders, and they’re very tall. No one cares. They think they’re the greatest band in the world. Still, no one cares.
It’s not that this thing is especially bad or anything (it’s no better or worse than Sam’s Town, just less funny). It’s just so patently unnecessary. I’ll ask the question yet again: who in their right mind was waiting for a Killers outtakes and rarities collection? Who really wants to hear an alternate version of “Sam’s Town” with nothing but a piano and some strings in it? Seriously, who? And you know that one’s called “Sam’s Town (Abbey Road Version)?” No shit! You can’t call a crappy, undeveloped alternate take of a mediocre song “Blonde on Blonde Version” or something and expect the greatness of the album in the parenthesis to just rub off on whatever you recorded. It doesn’t work that way. And you can’t drag Lou Reed in and do a duet with him and expect everyone to fete you as indie gods if the song is possibly the worst thing you’ve ever done. It doesn’t work that way either. Did Lou even listen to the backing track of “Tranquilize” before he did his vocals? It sounds like he’s reading the phone book. Pathetic. Doesn’t help that ol’ S.T.E. from the All Music Guide cited David Bowie’s horrific Tonight album in discussing the track and I actually agree with him. This song is just shockingly bad.
In a development slightly less surprising, the best song by far on this thing is the Joy Division cover, which the guys do a pretty decent job with, I’ll admit. Of course, the problem with throwing something like “Shadowplay” on a collection like this is that it may make your own limitations as songwriters ever more apparent, and that’s exactly what happens here. There are a few decently entertaining moments when the band strips off all pretense of being anything other than big, new-wave-douchey, ball-waving stadium rockers (“Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf,” “Glamorous Indie Rock and Roll,” “The Ballad of Michael Valentine,” “Who Let You Go?”) that are at least fun, but when the band tries just about anything else their success rate is not the highest I’ve ever seen. Points for trying to rock the country hoedown on “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” but points off for being completely unable to pull it off. And when this album fails (like the hideously disorganized “Move Away” and, of course, “Tranquilized”), it’s just fucking bad. You’ll also no doubt be glad to know that there’s like an eight-minute alternate version of “Mr. Brightside” here in which one of the best songs the band has ever done is turned into a synthy dance nothing track for people who don’t like music. I’ve also just discovered that it’s called the “Thin White Duke Remix,” as if this dickless piece of trash had some relation to David Bowie’s brilliant Station to Station album. Nice.
So no, I don’t like an album full of tracks not deemed good enough to be on the Killers’ two studio releases. I know you’re all shocked by this. The cover of “Shadowplay” is really good, though. So, you know, go buy some Joy Division albums.