Motley Croupiers
Las Vegas rockers, The Killers, return from their side projects to - eventually - craft a new album.
“Are we human?” The Killers’ Brandon Flowers once wondered. “Or are we dancer?” A full 4 years after their last LP, 2008’s Day and Age, the Las Vegas foursome have still not completed a follow up - that makes them very human. There have been solo records - Flowers’s Flamingo sounded like The Killers with the vocals turned up, drummer Ronnie Vannucci, Jr’s Big Talk, sounded like The Killers with the drums turned up, bassist Mark Stoermer’s sounded like Bob Dylan with the, oh, you get the message - but the longer they remain locked in their Mojave Desert studio, Battle Born, the more you can think, “Maybe bands can take too much time off.”
“I’m sure that’s a danger” Flowers says. “It’s a bit strange to spend time learning to hone your skills and figure out what makes you unique as a band, then take half a decade off”
When the risk you take is that it’s not all there when you come back?
“Exactly,” Flowers says. “We just hope that lightning strikes again”
If Battle Born ever has an elevator pitch, it’s “No curveballs”. After a string of albums that messed with the format - who can forget the heads-down riffola of All The Pretty Faces from Sawdust? - The Killers aren’t planning on this record frightening even one small horse, although Flowers adds the caveatt, “It’s still eclectic, I’ve not thrown the keyboards away.”
But it’s definitely more rock, we ask?
“It’s definitely heavier,” He nods.
Whenever a band has been away working on solo projects for a few years the fear is that someone in the camp will go crazy and demand a “jazz odyssey” direction. Happily, the one fresh song they aired at their London Scala show last year, The Rising Tide, didn’t even look in that direction. In fact, it’s uplifting electro-pop clatter wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Hot Fuss. “But we’re keeping our eye on Dave” suggests Vannucci Jr. “He already looks like Pat Metheny”
As far as other new songs go, Flowers’s favourite has the working title, Miss Atomic Bomb (“Can’t you see her in her sash?”) while Vannucci Jr talks up three he’s currently gripped by, Runaways, Flesh And Bone and Carry Me Home.
“These songs are so good I’m just desperate to play some shows” the drummer pleads. “I’d play the opening of a 7-Eleven at this point.”
While the band were working, Flowers found time to front the A Fire Still Burning campaign for the Mormon Church, a group he believes are misunderstood by the wider public. “That’s why Mitt Romney suffers. People are told lies about us and they believe them.” More personally, the band have just suffered a huge shock with the suicide of their sax player, Thomas Marth, who recorded and toured both their last two albums. “When you go through life and everything seems sunny and then you just kind of get hit with that?” says Flowers. “It put everything into sharp perspective.”
Now all they have to do is ensure that the lightning strikes in such amazing ways that Battle Born blows all out minds. No pressure, lads.
has anybody had this problem? you try to Google our man and come up with this guy in undies?
LOLOLOLOL
He is very famous swimmer in England ask anyone who Mark Foster is and they’ll say this guy.
he’s from where i live so yeah awkward times when i say i love mark foster
omfg this post is like last year why
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The Killers | Go All the Way (Raspberries Cover) / Dark Shadows Soundtrack
why I don’t see this on my dash? omg
this is PERFECT OMG.
thanks to FromKoreaToKillers for upload it (x)
It could be a new tradition.
Tim Burton puts Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter to his movies, and The Killers on the soundtracks.
