The killers
There’s a battle in Brandon Flowers.
For years, the Killers frontman has played dual lead roles: the boisterous, cocksure heartthrob at the helm of one of the greatest rock bands of the 21st century, and the coveted, spiritual nomad with an eye for eternity. “There’s been a kind of warring in my soul all my life,” Flowers says over the phone from his home in Park City, Utah. “I think growing a Mormon in Las Vegas had a lot to do with it.”
Flowers further explores that dichotomy on the Killers’ new album, Imploding the Mirage (from August 21), which bombast, insight and iron clays of equal size. “Caution” and “My Own Soul’s Warning” split the difference between glam-pop sheen and arena rock grandeur, while the band slips into slick country-rock on “Blowback,” soft rock mysticism over “Running Towards a Place” and new golf swagger about “Fire in Bone.” The lyrical themes are simple but universal: love, faith, the desire to escape from the fields of your place of residence. And the songs sound bigger than life, begging to scream from the wildest mountains – or, more realistically, blast of festival steps around the world as fireworks explode in the distance.
If 2020 went according to plan, the latter would happen at this point. The Killers announced a massive world tour in 2020 – festivals and stadiums in Europe, arenas in North America – in mid-March, just before coronavirus announced all live music. The ongoing pandemic forced them to reschedule their European dates for 2021 (North American dates are still pending) and the release of Imploding the Mirage from May to August due to mixed delays.
With a new album in the works and nowhere to be found, the Killers found themselves with a lot of unexpected free time on their hands. That she wrote another album.
‘I hit the gym, I did my voice lessons, I had made suits, I got ready for tour. And then everything was just shut down. And it was, how do I do that? Flowers says. ‘So instead of touring I went back to writing, and it was a pleasant surprise, just because I had never done that before. I had worked those muscles out already, and songs just came much more naturally than normal. . ”
Flowers estimates that the band has 11 songs ready for a new album, which they worked on during two week-long studio sessions in California and Las Vegas. “I really think it’s going to be a quick turnaround,” he says. “I estimate shorter than a year.”
That’s a stark contrast to the beleaguered early sessions before Imploding the Mirage, which marks the first Killers album written without co-founder guitarist Dave Keuning, who took a hiatus from the band in August 2017 and has not played with them since, although technically still an official member. (Bassist Mark Stoermer has also taken on a limited role since 2016 due to a pyro accident in 2013 that left him with hearing loss, although he wrote and recorded parts of Imploding the Mirage and is expected to play selected shows in the future.)
In the absence of King, Flowers and drummer Ronnie Vanucci Jr. have teamed up with producers Shawn Everett (Kacey Musgraves, Alabama Shakes) and Jonathan Rado of indie-rock duo Foxygen, while Weyes Blood (the moniker of psych-pop singer / songwriter Natalie Mering), the War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel, KD Lang and ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham all lent their talents to the album. Buckingham’s striking guitar solo rockets “Cautious” in the stratosphere, while Mering and Lang provide breathtaking songs on “My God” and “Lightning Fields” respectively.
‘I did not tell it [Lang] this, but she represents my late mother, ”Flowers says of her appearance on Lightning Fields. “‘I did not know if that would turn her off or not. That’s mom talking to my dad. ”
Mering and Lang contributed to the ‘female component’ of the album, as Flowers puts it. “Earlier, a theme started to develop, and I started to see that I wanted the record to be about two people becoming one and two people becoming eternal,” he says. ‘And on the cover of the album, which we had early on, there are these two kinds of heavenly beings on the cover, a man pulling this woman out of the storm. And I began to see parallels in my own experience with my wife. ”
Lyrically, Imploding the Mirage is a continuation of 2017s Wonderful Wonderful, who treated Tana’s wife’s difficulty with post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet while Wonderful Wonderful was marked for the most part by grief and pain, Imploding the Mirage is full of triumph, fun and – in a surprising new development for the Killers – romance. ‘My God, it’s like the weight is lifted’, thunders blossoms on ‘My God’, and on ‘dying race’, he promises, ‘If anyone compromises, I’ll be diehard / I’ll be there when water rises , I’ll be your lifeguard. ”
The album cover – Thomas Blackshears’s Dance of the Wind and Storm—Came the band’s creative beacon in making Imploding the Mirage. They printed copies and hung them all over the studio. “The producers watched it as they cosmically dive for vibes,” Flowers says. ‘I watched it as I sat on texts, and Ronnie watched it as he played the drums, and the foodrunners watched it as they brought food. It was just inevitable. ”
The meaning of Imploding the Mirage is two-fold. There’s the obvious nod to the famous Las Vegas Strip casino, but it also reflects Flowers’ decision to leave Vegas in 2017 and move to Park City, about an hour from where he spent his childhood. carried through.
“We were used to imploding the landmarks of our lives, places our grandparents once worked or that we would go to for Christmas morning,” Flowers says. ‘They implode things in Las Vegas. So I used that analogy for my move from Las Vegas. I think it’s about growing up, about realizing what’s important in your life. And instead of replacing it with another mirage or another facade, replace it with something eternal and real. ‘
Flowers wrote the album’s eternal perspective on the lessons he learned as a practicing member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. ‘It’s a bit of a tight fence,’ he admits, ‘to walk that line and not go too far into Christian rock.’
But the singer emphasizes that the grains of mental longing have been there since the Killers’ debut in 2004, Hot Fuss– specifically on the rising “All those things I did” – and were worked out Sam’s Town, whose texts were contaminated with religious images. “I had just such respect for people like Bono and Johnny Cash and people who had let it go, and I was still trying to find my way at that point,” Flowers says of his band’s early albums.
For nearly 20 years and six albums in their careers, the Killers remain one of the few rock acts that stadiums can still grab and sell six figures in their first week. Imploding the Mirage has already made a big splash on alternative radio, with “Caution” -top Billboard‘s Rock Airplay and Alternative Airplay charts. Flowers can’t wait to finally release the album, and he strikes a chord with playing these new songs live, where the Killers flourish.
“I think this experience will just never go away,” he says of rock shows. “We are definitely from a different time, and we have one foot in those traditions … and the other is looking forward to the future.”
As for that lifelong tug of war in the soul of Flowers?
“Ultimately, I think the faithful soul-winner wins.”
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