The Killers

 

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Biography by MacKenzie Wilson

Brandon Flowers (vocals/keyboards), David Keuning (guitar), Mark Stoermer (bass), and Ronnie Vannucci (drums) took the fashionista pop world by storm in summer 2004 with "Somebody Told Me." The perfectly stylish song pulls from the band's influences — the Smiths, New Order, Oasis, and the Cure — and it was just enough to get them on MTV. Part new wave and part new-millennium post-punk, this Las Vegas foursome originally got together in 2002. Flowers had left behind his former synth pop band, Blush Response, when he noticed a classified ad in the local newspaper placed by Keuning. Both of them were huge Oasis fans, and within weeks the two composed their soon-to-be cult hit, "Mr. Brightside." Stoermer, a former medical courier, and Vannucci, a classical percussion major at UNLV, soon joined the fray that became the Killers.

 

The London-based indie imprint Lizard King caught wind of the band's brewing hype and quickly signed them to issue the limited-edition single for "Mr. Brightside" in fall 2003. In October, the Killers' buzz earned them a prime spot at the annual CMJ Music Marathon. A worldwide deal with Island followed shortly thereafter, positioning the Killers to join the ranks of Interpol, the Rapture, and the Strokes. Shared U.K. dates with British Sea Power and stellastarr* in summer 2004 also gave the band the opportunity to showcase material from its debut album. Hot Fuss arrived in June and two months later, it was announced that the Killers were among the ten finalists up for the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize. Singles such as "Somebody Told Me," "Mr. Brightside," "Smile Like You Mean It," and "All These Things That I've Done" became worldwide chart hits for the group while Hot Fuss eventually earned five Grammy nominations in 2005 and sold over five million copies.

 

The Killers ultimately scrapped their plans of taking a break to recover from their relentless touring regime, and instead got right to work on their sophomore album. Writing came together quickly around a common theme of longing for the way things used to be since the demise of old-fashioned American values. Soon the guys were ready to hit the studio and became the first band to record inside the newly built facility at Vegas' Palms Hotel and Casino; helming the controls were legendary producers Flood and Alan Moulder (who had previously worked together with U2 and the Smashing Pumpkins). High praise from press and fans over early music, including the Bruce Springsteen-inspired lead single "When You Were Young," led up to the highly anticipated release of Sam's Town in early October 2006.

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Hot Fuss (Jun 15, 2004)

3 Stars

 

Review by MacKenzie Wilson

There are so many "the" bands — the Strokes, the White Stripes, the Rapture, the Hives — and so many garage rock/dance-rock tunes perfectly stylized and glamorous for the pop kids in the city and in the suburbs of new-millennium America. What's nice about these "the" bands is how they strive so desperately to individualize themselves. On a commercial level, they do quite well in delivering catchy pop hooks. When it comes to having actual talent, a select few actually do possess attention-worthy integrity. But there are others who don't, and they disappear from the American consciousness after a brief flirtation with success. Such theories, however, are left up to the individual music fan, so let's put that aside for a moment to experience the decadent pop world of the Killers. The Las Vegas foursome introduce a perfectly tailored new wave-induced art rock sound on their debut, Hot Fuss. They wooed MTV audiences and modern rock followers with the success of "Somebody Told Me" during summer 2004. This chunky-riffed single loaded with androgynous mystery and a dalliance with new romantic energy captures the infectious delivery of the Killers as a band. Vocalist/keyboardist Brandon Flowers does his best Simon LeBon imitation; the sex appeal and the boyish charm are perfectly in place as the rest of the band accents his rich, red-hotness just so. "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" and "Mr. Brightside" are equally as foxy as the album's first single, affirming that a formula is indeed in motion. It's hard to deny the sparkle and fade of Depeche Mode beats and the sensual allure of Duran Duran. After 25 years, those sounds still hold up; by 2004, however, it's an incredible task to pull this kind of thing off without selling yourself to the tastes of the masses. Interpol and the Walkmen have pulled it off; Franz Ferdinand and Hot Hot Heat have potential. The difference with the Killers is that the dynamic doesn't firmly hold together. The gospel/rock jaunt of "All These Things That I've Done" doesn't quit fit around the Cure-inspired synth reveries of "Everything Will Be Alright" and "Believe Me Natalie." "Midnight Show," as much as it plucks from Duran Duran's "Planet Earth" and "Is There Something I Should Know?," does show promise for the Killers. Hot Fuss came at the right time because the pop kids needed something to savor the summer with, and "Somebody Told Me" served that purpose. Now pull out your Duran Duran records and dance like no one is watching.

 

 

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Sam's Town (Oct 03, 2006)

3 Stars

 

Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Not even the Killers, the champions of retro new wave, think that synth rock is music to be taken seriously, and Lord knows that this Vegas quartet wants to be taken seriously — it's a byproduct of being taken far too seriously in the first place, a phenomenon that happened to the Killers after their not-bad-at-all 2004 debut album, Hot Fuss, was dubbed as the beginning of the next big thing by legions of critics and bloggers, all searching for something to talk about in the aftermath of the White Stripes and the Strokes. The general gist of the statement was generally true, at least to the extent that they were a prominent part of the next wave, the wave where new wave revivalism truly caught hold. They were lighter than Interpol and far gaudier, plus they were fronted by a guy called Brandon Flowers, a name so ridiculous he had to be born with it (which he was). And although it was hailed to the heavens on various areas of the Net, Hot Fuss became a hit the old-fashioned way: listeners gravitated toward it, drawn in by "Mr. Brightside" and sticking around for the rest. Soon, they made the cover of everything from Spin to Q, earning accolades from rock stars and seeing their songs covered on Rock Star, too. Heady times, especially for a group with only one album to its name, and any band that receives so much attention is bound to be thought of as important, since there has to be a greater reason for all that exposure than because Flowers is pretty, right? One of the chief proponents of the belief that the Killers are important is the band itself, which has succumbed to that dreaded temptation for any promising band on its sophomore album: they've gone and grown beards. Naturally, this means they're serious adults now, so patterning themselves after Duran Duran will no longer do. No, they make serious music now, and who else makes serious music? Why, U2, of course, and Bruce Springsteen, whose presence looms large over the Killers' second album, Sam's Town.

 

The ghosts of Bono and the Boss are everywhere on this album. They're there in the artful, grainy Anton Corbijn photographs on the sleeve, and they're there in the myth-making of the song titles themselves — and in case you didn't get it, Flowers made sure nobody missed the point prior to the release of Sam's Town, hammering home that he's just discovered the glories of Springsteen every time he crossed paths with the press. Flowers' puppy love for Bruce fuels Sam's Town, as he extravagantly, endlessly, and blatantly apes the Springsteen of the '70s, mimicking the ragged convoluted poet of the street who mythologized mundane middle-class life, turning it into opera. The Killers sure try their hardest to do that here, marrying it to U2's own operatic take on America, inadvertently picking up on how the Dublin quartet never sounded more European than when they were trying to tell one and all how much they loved America. That covers the basic thematic outlook of the record, but there's another key piece of the puzzle of Sam's Town: it's named after a casino in the Killers' home town of Las Vegas, and it's not one of the gleeful, gaudy corporate monstrosities glutting the Strip, but rather one located miles away in whatever passes for regular, everyday Vegas — in other words, it's the city that lies beneath the sparkling façade, the real city. Of course, there's no real city in Vegas — it's all surface, it's a place that thinks that a miniature Eiffel Tower and a fake CBGB's is every bit as good as being there — and that's the case with the Killers too: when it comes down to it, there's no there there — it's all a grand act. Every time they try to dig deeper on Sam's Town — when they bookend the album with "enterlude" and "exitlude," when Flowers mixes his young-hearts-on-the-run metaphors, when they graft Queen choirs and Bowie baritones onto bridges of songs — they just prove how monumentally silly and shallow they are. Which isn't necessarily the same thing as bad, however. True, this album has little of the pop hooks of "Mr. Brightside," but in its own misguided way, it's utterly unique. Yes, it's cobbled together from elements shamelessly stolen from Springsteen, U2, Echo & the Bunnymen, Bowie, Queen, Duran Duran, and New Order, but nobody on earth would have thought of throwing these heroes of 1985 together, because they would have instinctively known that it wouldn't work. But not the Killers! They didn't let anything stop their monumental misconception; they were able to indulge to their hearts' content — even hiring U2/Depeche Mode producers Alan Moulder and Flood to help construct their monstrosity, which gives their half-baked ideas a grandeur to which they aspire but don't deserve. But even if the music doesn't really work, it's hard not to listen to it in slack-jawed wonderment, since there's never been a record quite like it — it's nothing but wrong-headed dreams, it's all pomp but no glamour, it's clichés sung as if they were myths. Every time it tries to get real, it only winds up sounding fake, which means it's the quintessential Vegas rock album from the quintessential Vegas rock band.

 

 

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