REVIEW -- Artist: The Killers Album: “Sam’s Town” Label: Island Records

A few years back,

The Killers

released one of the best, most promising debuts in recent memory. Their album, “Hot Fuss” was a tight exciting chunk of new wave. It was one of those records that made you fondly look back to the best qualities of the music from the eighties, yet the production was appropriately slick and modern. The record company only released four singles off of “Hot Fuss” but there could have easily been six or seven hits.
Fast forward three years and you find the Killers on their sophomore follow-up, sadly flailing in the breeze. Where “Hot Fuss” was a multi-hued exciting record with each song differing from the next, their new record,

"Sam’s Town"

seems like 12 exercises in sameness. The melodies lack distinction. Lead singer Brandon Flowers sounds like he just wants to ramble off stories of great Americana legends, but he just comes off as a mere rambler. He doesn’t tell us anything worth hearing. He wants to be Mellencamp or Springsteen (an influence cited in many other reviews) but lacks the drive or sense of importance of both. Hit single “When You Were Young” is really the only good song here, but it’s really not that great. It sounds like Flowers is trying to be Las Vegas’ new-wave-leaning answer to Bon Jovi. It’s got a tired “We Gotta Get Outa This Place” sort of vibe. It would also be better if the finest point of the chorus weren’t ruined by overly dramatic falsetto background vocals. They sound hack-y and unprofessional It’s sad and disappointing.
On “Hot Fuss,” Flowers lyrics had real bite. He easily and interestingly told the story of a murder, and suspect interrogation in that album’s “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine.” Here, he comes up with clumsy, awkwardly generic lyrics like “Don’t you want to come with me?/Don’t you want to feel my bones on your bones?/ It’s only natural.” (from second single “Bones.” ) When I hear that, I think, “um……no.”
In “Uncle Jonny” Flowers talks about how “When everybody else refrained/My Uncle Jonny did cocaine.” Aha! Finally something vaguely interesting which could have some plot twists, with even a semi-decent guitar riff to back it up. Too bad the furthest he takes it is “I want to go out tonight. / Come a little closer to the city lights. “ It could’ve been so much more lurid and interesting but ends being another disappointment.
Anyway, it doesn’t help that throughout the album, and especially on the title track he sounds like Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo strangling Robert Smith of the Cure. It’s fair to say that perhaps my opinion of this album was shaped partly by the band’s downright dreadful performance on “Saturday Night Live” right before the album’s release.
My goal here is not to simply trash the Killers. I still think they have great potential to be a reasonably good band. A band which after a brilliant debut, rushed out their second album a little too soon. It happens to the best of bands sometimes, and I’m looking forward to hearing them come out with a great third album to leave “Sam’s Town” behind as a bad memory. In the meantime, it stands as the biggest disappointment of 2006. Too bad. “Hot Fuss’” hits “Mr. Brightside,” “Smile Like You Mean It,” and “Somebody Told Me” were memorable slices of rock. I really hope they can channel that same energy again. “Sam’s Town” has just vague sketches.