Week 80 : Day 7 : Inside Bay Area interview, Slashmusic Top 10 Facts, Times Online reviews
Interview

This One's A Killer from Inside Bay Area, 29th September 2006
by Tom Lanham.
- thanks to AngelEmz!


Flowers goes from Elton John style to Springsteen sound

There was more than a whiff of Las Vegas wafting around Brandon Flowers when he blew through the Bay Area roughly a year ago.
Buoyed by the quintuple-platinum success of "Hot Fuss" - the'04 Island debut of his alt-pop combo the Killers - the former Sin City bellboy wore a ruffled shirt, patent leather oxfords and a smoking jacket straight out of the Sinatra-chic'60s. Eyeliner and a flowing scarf added to the look, which made good sartorial sense given the company the singer/keyboardist was keeping at the time - Sir Elton John. Flowers had hung around Captain Fantastic so long, he'd actually started to dress like him.

"Elton? He's the best!" Flowers then enthused in a backstage chat. Flowers, who has socialized with Elton in Las Vegas on occasion, says of him: "He's the coolest fan. He knows everything about every new band, knows what he likes and doesn't like, and why he likes us. He says that we have soul."

It felt like talking to a kid in a candy shop, as Flowers related his brushes with celebrity. He'd met Bono, Noel Gallagher, even New Order bandleader Bernard Sumner, who'd snuck up behind him at a UK awards show to croon the signature Killers hit "Somebody Told Me" in his ear.

And thanks to other cheeky New Wave-retro smashes like "Mr. Brightside" and "All These Things That I've Done" (which earned five Grammy nominations in'05 and'06), Flowers was famous enough to casually travel in such circles, although he still couldn't quite believe it.

But he was worried. How could the Killers top such accomplishments? Would they go the way of other lounge-act legends before them? Or did Flowers have a few stylistic aces up his showman's sleeve?

Cut to: San Francisco, a few weeks ago, when a new, improved Killers tornadoed in to celebrate the 10th anniversary of local Britrock-themed nightclub Popscene (Thursdays at 330 Ritch) as the evening's surprise entertainment.

Sure, they had an ulterior motive - they were road-testing eight new tracks from their forthcoming sophomore album "Sam's Town." But they were happy to help out their former haunt.

"Our old manager was an S.F. man, so we'd come visit him and he'd take us to Popscene nights. When we were here making our first demos, we'd come hang out here, and we never saw any bands - we just came to dance. And it was always an aspiration for us to play here because of all that great music," he adds.

"So we played our first show in the Bay Area here. And this time, we knew we wanted to do secret shows, and this is one of the only places that we really wanted to do it."

The night before, the band had played a hush-hush hometown gig at a tiny place called the Celebrity, complete with Christmas-light-wreathed tumbleweeds onstage.

"There are just no tumbleweeds in San Francisco. They're a lot easier to find in Vegas," Flowers says. Tumbleweeds, in fact, are a handy metaphor for the changes in the look, and sound, of the Killers.

The campy cabaret clothes are gone. It's a leaner, meaner Flowers that leads the way back to the band's tour bus for a quick spin through the dramatically different "Sam's Town."

In cowboy boots, jeans, faux-snakeskin jacket and thick moustache, he resembles a notorious riverboat gambler of yore. He's definitely rolling the dice with this new work, which opens on the windswept title track, inspired by the late, legendary Vegas entrepreneur Sam Boyd, who came to the city in 1941 with $80 and a gaming-house dream.

"But 'Sam's Town' could also refer to Uncle Sam, Sammy Davis Jr. - there are all kinds of Sams," Flowers points out.

The record still maintains the Killers' crucial post-punk keyboard/guitar edginess. But there's a forlorn new Southwestern scent to "Read My Mind," "The River Is Wild," "Why Do I Keep Counting?" and the initial single "When You Were Young."

The disc, like a good carnival barker, welcomes folks to the show wth "Enterlude," then sends'em packing with the closing "Exitlude." Flowers says, "It almost feels like a concept album. And nobody does those anymore. But I think that you come to Sam's Town, and it's this big, over-the-top, larger-than-life place that people can hopefully escape to. And you feel sad to leave at the end, and hopefully that means you want to keep coming back."

There's also an underlying moral center to the set. Subtly, it rails against our egomaniacal, Hollywood-obsessed culture. Flowers says, "I think it's happening all over the world. It's magazines and Britney Spears and Louis Vuitton bags. That's what makes people's worlds go'round, and it extends all the way into sports. We have people who don't want to be in the Olympics on our basketball team because they're not getting paychecks for it. It's everywhere, and it's ridiculous."

What exactly has gotten into Flowers? A couple of key things. A year ago this August, he married his longtime sweetheart - a girl he was dating long before the Killers' name went up in lights - and started attending his old Mormon church with her again.

It's not easy residing in a metropolis that caters to the carnal, he'll confirm.

"And we're not completely partyless. But I was brought up religious, so that's been a nice balance for me. Some people would say it's a terrible way to live, because I live with guilt, but I think that keeps me on a good middle ground."

The second influence? Bruce Springsteen. Flowers hasn't met the man - yet - but he's heard his catalog, and, as a serious songwriter, become obsessed with it. It started with a simple "Hot Fuss" review that compared one number to classic Bruce. At first, he was insulted; later, intrigued.

He bought a Springsteen greatest-hits collection. Then "Born to Run." He says, "And that was it. I had to have everything. And Springsteen is just someone I took for granted. You hear the songs on the radio, and everybody knows the seven singles from "Born in the U.S.A." - those were just inescapable. But I never realized that there was a 21-year-old Bruce Springsteen out there that I could go buy, or just how ahead he was and how smart he was. I mean, just the song 'Badlands' alone - it's so good, you smell it. You smell the factory dust."

With the discovery of Springsteen, Flowers, 25, felt like he'd stumbled on a fountain of youth. "... I haven't felt like this in so long. And I was worried that I never would again. And what's cool is that it wasn't just Bruce - that led to Tom Petty. I didn't know about 'Damn the Torpedoes,' and now I do. And now I want to go to a record store again and flip through things. I just feel really excited."

The Killers, who return to the Warfield in San Francisco Oct. 8 and 9, seem to have broken the sophomore jinx by simply moving forward when listeners expected them to stand safely still.

Flowers remains zenlike about it all.

"As classic rock moves into its new phase," he explains, "You're starting to hear Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots on classic rock, and Metallica, even. But in 20 years, I want it to be us. You'll start to hear the Killers on classic rock. That's what we're here for. We want to be around. And I think we're making our mark right now."


Article

Somebody Told Me... top ten Killers facts from Slashmusic, 29th September 2006


Everything you think you know about The Killers is wrong. After months of extensive research (including sleeping rough in the desert outside of Vegas) we can reveal the results of a special Slashmusic investigation...

These, readers, are our Top Ten Killers facts!

Killers Fact No.1
The Killers could have been named after a 1981 Iron Maiden album. Or a 1982 Kiss album. Or a French hair metal group. Or a book by Ernest Hemingway. Or a convention of Jerry Lee Lewis impersonators. But they weren't. They were in fact named after a fictional band in the video for 'Crystal' by New Order. "It gave me the ambition that our actual band should be as perfect as their fictional band," said Brandon. Since The (real) Killers don't just mime along to New Order songs, we think this ambition has been more than realised.

Killers Fact No.2
Before their sat-in-front-of-the-telly moment of inspiration, the band were nearly called The Genius Sex Poets. Which is a bit rubbish. People with nothing better to do might have noticed their former rubbish name is scrawled on the drum kit in the American video for 'Mr Brightside'. Amazing.

Killers Fact No.3
Brandon is a Mormon. But he still drinks and smokes, which occasionally gets him a slapped wrist or two. Maybe even from his wife Tana Munblowsky who he married in Hawaii last year. We couldn't tell you for sure.

Killers Fact No.4
'Sam's Town' is in fact a casino hotel in the band's hometown of Las Vegas. Mormons reject gambling as "a pernicious evil to society". But a footnote in the Book Of Mormon adds "It is perfectly OK to name your second album after a casino, though."

Killers Fact No.5
We all know him as the big haired guitarist and founding member of The Killers. But there was a time when Dave Keuning wanted to be known as 'Tavian Go'. This was clearly ridiculous, so he changed his mind. He is also a fan of The Cure but insists he "doesn't eat bats". It sounds like he's thinking of Ozzy Osbourne, but let's not tell...

Killers Fact No.6
Further blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, The Killers once played 'Smile Like You Mean It' at The Bait Shop, the legendary - if entirely made up - venue in teen TV show 'The OC'. During their performance, it becomes obvious that Seth and Lindsay have little in common, and are unable to smile in the manner advised by the band.

Killers Fact No.7
Mark Stoermer was so good at being a fan of The Killers that they eventually invited him to join the band. See kids, it really can happen. He once played trumpet in a marching band, but there wasn't much call for that when recording 'Hot Fuss', so they asked him to play bass instead.

Killers Fact No.8
Brandon's former band was called Blush Response. But when the rest of the group moved to Los Angeles, his response wasn't to blush at all, but to quit and answer an advert by guitarist Dave Keuning in the 'Las Vegas Weekly'. They soon formed a new band with a temporarily rubbish name.

Killers Fact No.9
Las Vegas, where The Killers were born, is Spanish for 'The Meadows'. It is also the setting for many brilliant movies including 'Viva Las Vegas', 'Leaving Las Vegas' and, um, 'Honey I Blew Up The Kid'.

Killers Fact No.10
Everywhere The Killers go, a natural disaster is sure to follow. While recording 'Believe Me Natalie', drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr was knocked off his stool by an earthquake. When recording 'Change Your Mind' they were nearly engulfed in brush fires. And, most amazingly, when flying to the UK to tour in 2003, they thought they were all going to die. Only it was just an air pocket. Phew.

Bonus fact!
Because it's always good to have a trade to fall back on, Brandon has a neat little sideline which you can find out about on his website.


Review

Pop CD of the Week: The Killers: Sam’s Town from Times Online, September 24th 2006
by Dan Cairns.
- thanks to stace!


This will, I think, come to be seen as a transitional album, one foot in Hot Fuss, the other stepping purposefully, if not wholly convincingly, towards new sonic horizons. The talk of Springsteen influences proves partly true: Bling (Confession of a King) and Why Do I Keep Counting? keen with existential yearning for salvation, for a new frontier. But the band’s pop smarts are sparkling, too. Bones, Read My Mind and When You Were Young glory in their hook-savvy swagger, and show how superb this rhythm section is, how Dave Keuning can transform a song with a flick of his plectrum. But it is Brandon Flowers who commands the spotlight, his contributions thrilling and mystifying; the former as, with an Orbisonian catch in his voice, he sings Read My Mind; the latter when he mints a melody as beautiful as that song’s verse, then careers away in modulation. For all its two or three mishits, this is an extraordinary record, thrumming with hopes and dreams.

4 stars.


Review

The Killers - Sam's Town from Times Online, 24th September 2006
by Pete Paphides.
- thanks to stace!


As keen students of the era that spawned Ultravox, the Killers will no doubt remember the video to the group's 1982 hit Hymn, which seeks to retell the Faust story through the medium of synth-pop. Here, a shadowy figure with green contact lenses presents various members of Ultravox with a contract that promises untold riches. Even Midge Ure, playing a journeyman pub rocker, isn't immune to such Satanic overtures. As the video ends, we see him propelled to the dizzy heights of stardom with his universally adored 1980s sounds.

God knows what happened to Ultravox, but if the Killers' second album is anything to go by, the guy with the green contact lenses has landed a plum job as Mercury's head of A&R. Before its release, much has been made of the frontman Brandon Flowers's epiphanic transformation from mascara-eyed authority on the UK post-punk scene to Bruce Springsteen convert. Now the Las Vegas quartet have facial hair where once there was none, while Flowers's trenchcoat-and-beads get-up positively reeks of Boss. Sure enough, This River Is Wild, the new single When You Were Young and the album's breathlessly romantic highlight Bones reflect that change.

The way Flowers tells it though, it all amounts to a rediscovery of the American dream. "Most of the (new) songs are about getting to that place," he recently told NME, "of making it to the promised land. And that idea runs through the record." This, of course, is just the kind of thing that ambitious pop stars have to say when they have just made a record all about its own desire to be successful. "I've got this energy beneath my feet/ Like something underground's gonna come up and carry me," declares the singer on the stampeding title track, gripped by a zeal common only to people who presume that they must look as thrilling to 30,000 fans as 30,000 fans look to them.

It's some small mercy, at least, that the group's embrace of Americana sits easily with the Brit-loving elements that distinguished 2004's Hot Fuss. Fans of 1980s vista-rock practitioners - Echo & the Bunnymen; the supersized Cure of Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me; inevitably, U2 - will warm to the titanic self-belief that allows Bling (Confessions of a King) and My List to bypass anything resembling a whistleable melody. Listen to them alone in your house and Flowers's epically meaningless exhortations - "higher and higher/ We're gonna take things down to the wire" - will feel a bit sleazy; on the way to Sainsbury's in the car, they'll seem amusingly incongruous; on some vertiginous coastal road in the Scottish Highlands they'll probably sound halfway decent.

Given that no one ever ends up sounding like this accidentally - the producers Flood and Alan Moulder clearly understood what was required - it seems churlish to point out that Sam's Town offers little emotional nourishment. The Killers' determination to pack stadiums is fine. At some level that's clearly what Bruce and Bono also wanted. But what for those artists was a means is for the Killers an end. This, ultimately, is what their Big Idea boils down to. They just want you to look at them.


Media Watch
Toronto station Edge 102.1 will air a Killers interview and Sam's Town on October 1st
4Music presents The Killers will be on October 1st at midnight
Stripped will show footage of the Empire Ballroom gig (26th August) on October 3rd
The Killers will be on Jimmy Kimmel Live on October 3rd, 4th, 5th
The Killers are in this week's NME (Jarvis Cocker on the cover)
The Killers are on the cover of Billboard magazine (September 2006)
Brandon is in Interview magazine (October 2006)
The Killers are in Rolling Stone (Jack Nicholson on the cover)
The Killers are in Paste magazine (October issue, Zach Braff on the cover)
Brandon is in Jane Magazine (October 2006)
The Killers are in Q Magazine (October issue)
The Killers are in Blender (October issue)
The Killers are in Giant magazine (October/November issue)

Awards Watch
MTV Europe Music Awards - Vote for Best Rock

--

For all the latest news, register as a member of the official community: http://comunita.thekillersmusic.com