The Killers – Wonderful Wonderful
The Killers throw a party, serve kool aid, and ask you to bring snacks.
“I hate when it gets serious,” Brandon Flowers croons on one of this collections more confusing cuts, ‘Out Of My Mind’. This about sums up the problem with recent output from The Killers.
Wonderful Wonderful is the latest offering from the Las Vegas quartet and is at best refreshing from the accidental Dad Rock of Battle Born, but suffers from similar ills. Contrast the troubled husband narrating the aforementioned track with the playful boasting of the records most exciting number, ‘The Man’ and it’s night and day.
‘The Man’ is not only an 80s Pop masterpiece that serves up just the right amount of office funk to motivate even the most distressed cube farmer to say, “screw it, Im hitting happy hour”, it’s maybe a candidate for 2017’s best single. It’s also a reminder of what once was.
The Killers introduced themselves to the world as a band that wasn’t afraid of not taking themselves too seriously on their, ‘you can’t believe how well this has aged’ debut. Hot Fuss was a record that made the impossible balancing act of bringing together 80’s glitz and 90’s Brit Pop aesthetics, all while dressing it up in early 2000’s Post Punk revival clothing. A record packed with swagger, hooks, and a tongue placed firmly in cheek. While a lot of bands spend their early careers attempting the often pointless goal of proving artistic integrity, only to explore radio plays later on, this band knew it’s wiser to engage the audience from the get go rather than push them away. The trouble it seems is they happened to nail it so hard on the first take that they can’t escape its shadow.
Flowers and company show similar fearlessness here, but in favor of earnestness and the results are varied. Take songs like ‘Tyson v Douglas’ or ‘Life To Come’. Both display The Killers knack for Cheap Trick worthy Power Pop even with the occasional embarrassing lyric, case in point in the latter where Brandon advises you to “drop kick the shame.” This is a line that really no one should sing, ever, but with Flowers’, let’s say, shameless commitment, he actually sells it. The same can’t be said for ‘Rut’, a telling title if there ever was one to view on a track listing, which has our singer climbing and climbing, reaching heights that are sub Coldplay. The whole section sounds suspiciously close to a PBS World promo. It’s also worthy of note that the last song, ‘Have All The Songs Been Written’ upholds the tradition of every Killers album having a terrible closer.
Brandon recently quipped in an interview that he’s not hearing any young bands doing anything close to Interpol’s classic, ‘Obstacle 1’, when dude seems dead set on making ‘Obstacle Corinthians II’ because with all the self affirmations and believe in yourself bombast, they too often come off as a Christian Rock outfit. Things are becoming a tad sexless which is not The Killers we first met. It’s of course ridiculous to expect them to pretend to be the same hungry 20 somethings from Nevada but they could benefit from loosening up a bit, as clearly evidenced by the lead off single. Flowers is a passionate and highly skilled songwriter, so maybe The Killers will settle into the role of being a great singles band. But hey, at least there’s nothing as bad as ‘Here With Me’ on this thing. 7.7/10
Ben Stephanus