Explanation of ‘Both Sides of the Coin’ Reviews
Heads:
We’ll start by addressing the elephant in the room: being a fan of The Killers couldn’t really be any more problematic.
Apart from being just about the only modern band of any note Mitt Romney has openly endorsed, and one of the sole issues we learned his opinion on in general, they’re still The Killers, the last vestige of dance rock, a genre that, in the roughly 10 years since its explosion, has since been expelled to the indie rock equivalent of Alaska, or rather that section of our consciousness where bands like The Rapture, Franz Ferdinand and Rock Kills Kid await the disdainful raised eyebrows of tomorrow’s YouTube junkies and the smirks of future sarcastic nostalgic types.
“Battle Born” isn’t a great album. It’s stamina wanes in the middle and even its best songs sound like sweeping campaign promises, rolling off the tongue with ease but only because they lack weight. It’s an important disc for this band, though. After all the dance rock bands that have come and gone, this is The Killers sounding like the last survivors, singing like they’ve outlasted their peers and thinking like big crowds are the only ones that matter.
And they’re right, to a point.
Despite the endorsement by the Romcom himself, The Killers trajectory has been more comparable to Barack Obama’s. Both had a strong honeymoon period before succumbing to the strain of populist sentiment. By falling for smart hits like “Mr. Brightside” and “Somebody Told Me,” we unconsciously elected The Killers to be one of those rare bands that carries the weight of our shared expectations, and more problematically, our different ideas on how this promise should be delivered.
The Killers haven’t figured out a way to drive popularity above 50 percent since, but they continue to evolve, straining for that happy medium between “Sam’s Town” and “Hot Fuss,” the dirty Las Vegas city night and the open country beyond. And though lead singer Brandon Flowers has lost his sharp tongue (and adopted Bono’s unbearable yea-ahhs – see superhit “Runaways”) he seems to be content with dropping the angst of his younger days in favor of following the everyman-champion stance of the elder stadium-fillers.
U2, Green Day and Springsteen references abound, from the good “Miss Atomic Bomb” to the bad “Be Still,” and those that waver uncomfortably between these two points, “Flesh and Bone.”
Overall, there isn’t a single song on this album – maybe with the exception of “Battle Born” – that makes me feel like I did when I heard “Hot Fuss” – still one of the most consistent albums of the 2000s – “Sam’s Town” – an underrated classic – or even the handful of great tracks off 2008’s “Day & Age.”
But, this album doesn’t have to. It’s not for me. It’s for The Killers and their legacy, it’s for the kids who will hear “Runaways” in the backseat of their parents car and listen to the old songs, much the way I discovered Weezer through “Beverly Hills” or Red Hot Chili Peppers through “Dani California.”
So, maybe this album doesn’t become one of my favorites. But, even as I skip through the disc for weak points to single out, I’m hit with surprisingly agile basslines, airy melodies that sound ripe for sing-alongs and spry ’70s-schlock hooks in unexpected places.
But it doesn’t matter what I think, what matters is The Killers are still around and that they still sound like they’re driving through the night without a place to pull over.
Tails:
The cover of the deluxe edition of The Killers’ new album, “Battle Born,” shows a hot rod barrelling toward a horse in a stormy desert landscape, presumably in some crazed man vs. animal game of chicken whose origin can only be explained by the lack of backstory needed for album sleeves.
What’s upsetting is how inaccurately this image describes the tone of this album. Instead of The Killers coming into their own, and relying on their idiosyncrasies – like the songs about gender confusion and dancefloor murder – that enamored many of us with them in the first place, with “Battle Born,” what we really get to hear is The Killers taking the easy way out.
They’ve already been granted stadium status, but they’re acting like apprentices, content to build with the same brick and mortar of their stadium forebearers, even if they had their own building blocks to begin with.
Most of “Battle Born,” the band’s fourth proper studio album after the lackluster, but sporadically redeeming “Day & Age” and a subsequent four-year hiatus, finds the band and frontman / lead songwriter Brandon Flowers peppering their sound with we-approve-this-message nods to the greats.
See the way “Heart of a Girl” takes a stab at The Eagles, how “Miss Atomic Bomb” borrows its lyrical setting from Green Day’s “American Idiot” and how Flowers can’t help but pump songs with Springsteen-isms like “Esmerelda County,” “redwood sky” and “Charleston Avenue.” Instead of cooking the meat, he seems to feel that using a Ron Popeil baster injector filled with Americana is the best solution at every turn.
“From Here on Out” might be the most offensive song of the lot even though it’s one of the best tracks. The song is all about someone who chose the hard way over the easy way:
“Friends are gonna be hard to come by
Left us wondering what was it was all about
You had it easy man, you chose the hard way
Walk that old lonely road in a shadow of a doubt…”
They have the right idea, I just hope they know this sentiment doesn’t apply to them.
VERDICT: Heads
Pete Rizzo can be reached at prizzo@thoughtpollution.com.