“We’re on top/it’s just a shimmy and a shack/I can’t fake/we’re on top”, croaks The Killers’ Brandon Flowers through the hot hot heat of a long sold-out Tuts. But can it be as simple as that?
A jumble of Morrissey affectations (a declamatory fist here, a lick of the lips there) Flowers is as immaculately studied as his white dinner jacket is dazzling. He fronts a band that sound like all your early-‘80s music fantasies packaged into one brightly coloured piece of costume jewellery, but a couple of weeks after their debut LP “Hot Fuss” bubbled through LAUNCH's veins like a bottle of freshly-opened pop, doubt is growing in this stomach like a dreaded tumour.
The Killers most certainly are on top, shafting the zeitgeist with a virile mix of hipster cool and the steely determination of a marketing exec. Trouble is, to the OMD swoosh of murder ballad “Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine” and the Dexys-style soul stutter “Andy, You’re A Star”, it's unclear whether the zeitgeist is rocking out or if it should throw The Killers off and call the music cops.
That’s the conundrum. While the crowd down the front are po-going like frantic kids on Christmas morning, the rest of us are haunted by the suspicion that The Killers are crafty stealers, a hologram of a nostalgic MTV video compilation with Flowers as talented karaoke singer. Not that you can blame them. Both their strength and their downfall, Nevada’s harsh cultural climate has smoothed The Killers into a polished pebble. From their Vegas basement, they knew they couldn’t make a noise unless people would hear them and people wouldn’t hear them unless they got their CDs into Wal-Mart.
Whereas Franz Ferdinand’s glorious excitement comes from sounding like an awkward jumble that hangs together almost by fluke, The Killers cannot afford the luxury of uncertainty. And while we may forgive their bull-in-a-china-shop brashness and their bristling, hard won self-assurance, no amount of neon flash can obscure the lamentable “Glamorous Indie Rock‘n’Roll”, a Gallagher brothers dirge that can only turn the doubters into full-on haters. Once, in “Somebody Told Me”, the chemistry of that first, dangerous tryst is recaptured with Ronnie Vannucci’s smarting snare and Mark Stoermer’s rubbery bass making shapes under Flowers’ keyboard and arch lyrics.
As populist and fizzy as Coca Cola, The Killers will give you a sugar rush, but beware the comedown – it’s rough.
