The Killers - Sam's Town
Tue 3rd Oct, 2006 in Music Reviews
The new Killers album Sam’s Town smells like a rock record, tastes like a pop record and looks like a masterpiece. It’s the type of record that boys put on to woo the ladies. Every song flows on from the next in one big sing-along fantasy. It feels like they’ve been doing it all of their lives. And to think that it’s only their second album.
The pop fashionistas who wrote that Somebody Told Me song are back. They’re still taking cues from their influences — The Smiths, New Order, Oasis, The Cure and David Bowie — but instead of sounding like a cheesy rendition of all of these bands, they come off smelling like roses.
After scrapping plans for a tour earlier this year, they locked themselves away and started the tenuous process of writing. From there they went to Vegas’ Palms Hotel and Casino to create history as the first band to ever use the newly built studio. Flood and Alan Moulder (U2, Smashing Pumpkins) were behind the control desk tweaking all the right knobs in all the right places.
Brandon Flowers’ voice is impossible to resist. He has a way of sucking you in even when you think that you’re bored of it and are going to start looking for something new. He can tug on your heart strings and he knows it. He even dresses like the man who’s got it all. Girls are sucked in to his wily charm almost instantaneously. In a way, he could even be the Mr Charisma that Frenzal Rhomb talked about all those years ago. He isn’t too bad on the eye either.
For a record that took only three weeks to write, it’s impressive to say the least. The songs follow the common trend of longing for the ways things used to be. In short, it’s about old-fashioned American values. That shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, considering that Flowers is a Mormon. The best songs on Sam’s Town are the ones that make you think that Flowers is only singing to you while at the same time maintaining a stadium rock sound. Basically that would include all of the fourteen songs that are featured, from the rock songs to the slow ballads.
It’s been obvious for years that The Killers have something special. And with Sam’s Town it’s going to be surprising if it doesn’t top everyone’s favourite albums of the year list.
Watch the YouTube footage of the Killers playing When You were Young at the MTV VMAs
jamiepoetry
said on the 6th Oct, 2006