Born in the USA;
bloom in the UK
The Killers had to cross the Atlantic to find fame, but their new
sound does justice to American legends, says Kitty Empire
Sunday November 26, 2006
Guardian
The Killers
Glasgow Academy
It would not have
been at all surprising if the Killers had limped onstage in
Glasgow clutching wadded bandages and dragging bloody stumps.
Their second album, Sam's Town , received generally warm reviews
in the UK. (It stands to reason: like the Strokes and Scissor
Sisters before them, we made Las Vegas's Killers famous, and we
indulge our progeny.) But in their native US, Sam's Town was
savaged.
Where UK critics
heard a big, bold progression from the band's sneaky
synth-pop-cum-indie-rock hybrid debut Hot Fuss - a record that
sold 5m copies worldwide - the Americans smelled a rat. Rolling
Stone was particularly disparaging about the way the Killers
filched from Springsteen, pooh-poohing Sam's Town 's wide open
roads and heavy weather metaphors.
The New York Times
twisted the knife: 'Like true children of Vegas, the Killers create
a simulacrum of an important album, swiping desert rain, Main
Streets, devil water and unflattering moustaches from older heroes,
but taking no meaning or inspiration from them.' Yowch. But the
subtext may well have been this: how dare a bunch of limp-wristed
Anglophiles, with their Duran Duran fetish and the audacity to get
famous in Britain first, how dare they try to write the Great
American Album?
So the four Killers -
plus one auxiliary guitarist/keyboard player, Ted Sabley - lope on
to the Academy boards with the easy relief of a band coming home.
All that unpleasant nay-saying is an ocean away.
The band have
actually done away with much of the road-weary guitar troubadour
accessorising. Singer Brandon Flowers, the troubled Mormon from Sin
City, is in a super-cropped tartan jacket. His synthesiser is
perched on a stand whose statuesque clawed foot grasps a ball
(surely an outbreak of the band's alleged dry sense of humour).
Laconic guitarist Dave Keuning is all foofy hair and interesting
tailored jacket.
It's very hard not to
get carried along by the jubilation, the lush roar of guitars vying
with synthesisers, the bonhomie. One girl sports a fake handlebar
moustache, in tribute to drummer Ronnie Vannucci, a bear of a man
who almost obscures the big gong behind him. For a band so pumped up
on the steroid of Americana, the Killers remain surprisingly direct
and unconceited in the flesh. Perhaps next spring's stadium tour
will be different, but for now they play their songs loud and
straight.
Flowers hasn't turned
into Springsteen yet either, preferring a very low-key David Byrne
twitchiness to the grandiose gesture. 'Shall we?' he asks simply at
the start, but not in a stilted way. The most ostentatious he gets
is an effete vogue, or, if movement is really required, a sedate
kind of seahorse mating display. At the peak of the encore - where
everyone, by previous arrangement, bawls 'I've got soul but I'm not
a soldier,' as though it actually meant something - Flowers stands
on top of his upright piano, waving the microphone stand around as
if he's reeling in a vast fish.
Honestly, the new
songs do sound loads better live than they do on CD, as though the
very air has made room for them. 'Bling (Confessions Of A King)'
thunders in, and you're struck less by the gigantism of its
ambitions than the thumping great rhythm (and compassion) rolling
around inside it. The song's chirpy synth line is lost in the
18-wheeler-like rumble, as are quite a few of the more delicate
touches on other songs tonight. I swear I heard synth horns tooting
along on 'Bones' once - the cheapest patina of cred in the book. But
where have they gone? Lumbering and inchoate tonight, this latest
single is actually one of the weaker songs in the set. But, at
volume, much of Sam's Town - 'Bling', 'When You Were Young', 'Read
My Mind', 'Reasons Unknown' - is totally convincing: there is
important stuff going on here. It may not add up to the Great
American Album, but Flowers and his band have every right to deploy
the cliches of their land, as long as they are doing something new
and useful with them.
And, on balance, they
are. Flowers has taken the icy feeling from the Killers' first album
and thawed it out, opening up their previously airless club-bound
sound to the elements. And they tackle bigger themes - Flowers'
father's drinking, horizon-sized regrets and betrayals - with the
same gusto as they once did pithy love-gone-wrong songs.
It's just as well
that the air has accomodated these super-sized newbies, since the
set list tonight is weighted 10 to six in favour of Sam's Town . The
insistent disco of 'Somebody Told Me' and plangent New Wave of
'Smile Like You Mean It' from Hot Fuss do stand out like goosebumps
amid the thick chest hair of the new songs. But this is now a band
with a lot of moods - jealous, snarky, sad, uplifting, epic,
questing. 'Mr Brightside' remains one of the best songs this
generation has yet produced about the burning indigestion of
infidelity.
There are still
cracks in the road. We could do without Sam's Town 's 'Enterlude'
and 'Exitlude', little circussy bookends whose lyrics ('It's good to
have you with us even if it's just for the day,') play a little too
sincerely on the blatant lies of casino-hotel hospitality. The stage
set clangs confusedly between too obvious - an enormous Sam's Town
sign - and too subtle. Is the bunting just bedraggled? Or is it
meant to conjure up a quaint Fifties optimism, eaten away by the
moths of unfeeling progress?
Hell, maybe it's just
bunting. And maybe the Killers have actually made, if not the Great
American Album, then a good American album. One with flaws, sure,
but one that looks set to grow confidently into its oversized boots
http://www.thekillersfansite.com |