Will The Killers will ever live down the misstep that was Day & Age, a rigid Bowie pastiche with every intimation of wit and knowingness boiled away? Always an easy band for cynics to mock – Brandon Flower’s facial hair was inevitably a target – for the first time they openly became objects of derision, largely on account of the slathered chorus to ‘Human’, wherein Flowers declared open war on basic sentence structure (“Are we human or are we dancer?.” he asked, to which there really is no answer other than to biff him about the chops with hardback edition of Basic English Grammar).
A whole four years later – yes, they have been away that long – The Killers’ fourth record works hard at recapturing their early swagger. Now in his 30s and married with three kids, Flowers has ditched the pretty-boy makeup and reverted to leather jacketed first principles. Musically, the group are going in much the same direction: opener ‘Flesh & Bone’ explicitly recalls the straight-up ‘80s pop rock of debut Hot Fuss, with its gazing-at-distant-peaks chorus, kitchen sink production and cacophony of guitars. Intimations of marital discord tinge recent single ‘Runaway’, a song putatively about the freedom of the road which gradually reveals itself to be a rumination on a relationship turned staid (it’s hard not to think that, with his mid 30s hurtling down the rail, Flowers is getting a sense of what a midlife crisis might taste like). There’s a lot of momentum in these early tracks but the band can’t quite sustain the pace: ‘Miss Atomic Bomb’ is a would-be stadium pleaser that doesn’tachieve lift-off.
Another relationship-gone-south song ‘Here With Me’ shows Flowers was paying attention when he covered Kim Carnes’ ‘Betty Davis Eyes’ on his solo tour; however the song never rises above fanboy tribute. And yet, for all its weaker moments, Battle Born, named for Nevada’s unofficial motto, does not lack for unexpected delights. The dully bombastic ‘Deadline & Commitments’ segues into a Joy Division-esque minimalist rock-out; the lilting ‘From Here On Out’, with its guitar line lifted from the outro to ‘Layla’, is, straight-up, one of the finest songs The Killers have ever written.
It is unclear what sort of progress this album represents. In fact, the case could be made it’s the work of a band retreating to its roots and pitching, fairly unashamedly, to the base. Whatever – when it’s good, it’s irresistible.