After undertaking a brief hiatus, The Killers return back to
the spotlight (right where they belong) with their fourth studio album, Battle
Born. The band might be born for battle, but it seems more likely that they
were born to make hook-laden arena rock at a level rarely experienced in this
current era of rock music.
“Flesh and Bone” begins the album with a somber piano line
superimposed over a synth line that sounds like it was pulled from an 8-bit NES
version of Castlevania, before vocalist Brandon Flowers kicks the album’s intro
into full blast with the first verse. His vocals are vastly improved from Day
and Age and Flamingo, here sounding like a mix between The Gaslight Anthem’s
Brian Fallon and arena rock/glam artists such as David Bowie. The song is as
perfect a welcome back to one of the world’s best pop-rock bands as anyone
could have asked for.
Lead single “Runaways” sounds like modern rock’s answer to
Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road”. Weaving highly poetic lyrics (“blonde hair
blowing in the summer wind, blue eyed girl playing in the sand”) with
characters that listeners can have empathy for, Flowers tells a story of attempted
escape in much the same way that Springsteen did more than 30 years prior. The
theme of desperation is one that still holds relevance all these years after
Springsteen wrote about on Born to Run, and Flower’s calls upon this
desperation for the song’s main refrain, “Ain’t we all just runaways”.
The stop-paying-attention-and-you’d-miss-it percussion
flares in “A Matter of Time” emphasize the complex subtleties of the hard
rocking number. They blend into the background just enough to not create a
distraction, but drummer Ronnie Vannucci, Jr. is so precise at his craft that
you know he planned every drum hit out to precision. The attention to the tiny
details is also apparent on “Miss Atomic Bomb” as Flowers drops a casual hint
at the band’s mega-hit “Mr. Brightside” into the lyrics. “I was new in town,
the boy with the eager eyes,” he sings. It’s as if The Killers have taken a
fine-toothed comb to their best songs and made them as perfectly presented as
possible for the listener.
The problem with this is that not every song on the album
gets the same treatment. Unfortunately, Battle Born suffers from an album
quality that I call “Hot Fuss Syndrome.” Named after the Killers’ 2004 debut
album Hot Fuss, this term is one that I use to describe an album that has been
frontloaded with such incredible tracks on the A-side that the back-half of the
album couldn’t possibly live up to the front. Battle Born has the same problem
as its predecessor. The best of the best here (“Runaways”, “Flesh and Bone,” “Here
With Me”) are almost exclusively on the A-side of the album, the same scenario
as Hot Fuss (“Mr. Brightside”, “All These Things I’ve Done”, “Smile Like You
Mean It”).
Some of the album’s later tracks run together while others (“Heart
of A Girl” especially) are just plain and cookie cutter in comparison to the
exhilarating start of the album. Though the album’s penultimate track “Be Still”
shows some promise, it suffers from the same problem that many of the songs off
U2’s most recent effort No Line on The Horizon had, the song meanders without
making any real meaningful racket. It’s just not as memorable as Flowers’ belting
of the line, “I’m not gonna let you, runaway.”
Bottom Line: The Killers are at their best when they are
making grandiose and emphatic arena-rock songs with Springsteenesque lyrics.
Battle Born has plenty of that (especially “Runaways” and the terrific
self-titled album closer.) It also features an exceptional vocal performance
from Brandon Flowers, one of rock’s best and most distinctive frontmen. If only
for his vocal performance alone, you should take a listen to Battle Born.
Recommended if You Rock: Bruce Springsteen, U2, Meat Loaf,
David Bowie, any other artists that has combined arena rock qualities with
lyrical poetry
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