Killers' tight set thrills fans

GRAND PRAIRIE - For the Killers, life is good, and they showed it with their performance Wednesday night at Nokia Theatre.

A year and a half ago, the Killers were a relatively unknown band from Las Vegas, riding a small wave of hype in Great Britain. Now, with several hit singles and the multiplatinum Hot Fuss to their credit, they've got a lot of reasons to feel triumphant.

Their performance was tight and straightforward, and that's clearly what the crowd wanted.

Bursting on stage and strutting around like the cock of the walk, front man Brandon Flowers enthusiastically pecked at his rhinestone-studded synthesizer during the set opener, Jenny Was a Friend of Mine.

The band is young, but its influences are clearly rooted in the 1980s. It's easy to hear little bits of Duran Duran or the Cure in synthesizer-heavy songs such as Somebody Told Me and Smile Like You Mean It.

When it came to smiles, Flowers was always wearing one, especially when he started Somebody Told Me by telling the crowd, "This one's a firecracker."

The near-capacity crowd pumped fists, singing along with and sometimes almost drowning out Flowers on the chorus.

Some of the show's best moments came when the band crept out of its New Wave shell for more rock-driven songs, such as the unreleased All the Pretty Faces and the set closer, All These Things That I've Done.

Both sounded looser than the dance-floor-ready beats of the rest of the band's repertoire.

But Flowers' penchant for the dramatic can be a little tiresome. The band dropped out of Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll so Flowers could cast himself as a bleeding-out-his-eyes crooner.

Opening for the Killers was San Diego's Louis XIV, a grimy garage rock outfit that is one-third AC/DC, one-third Kinks and one-third Spinal Tap.

Their sexed-out, boozed-up swagger was the perfect counterpoint to the Killers' uptight pulse.

GRADE: B