The Killers Day & Age Album Review
Spaceman Glitter Meets Las Vegas Humans & British Dance Techno Wiz
Dec 18, 2008
Like their home town of Las Vegas, The Killers offer shallow glam. On their third album, Day & Age, they take the best of 80’s pop, dance and New Wave, fuse it with indie rock gleaming in layered electronics, soulless soul and heaps of fun, and make the best album of their skyrocketing career.
Fans shouldn’t seek the pseudo deepness that made their sophomore album Sam’s Town such a bore, although “A Dustland Fairytale” heads in that direction. Instead, lead singer Brandon Flowers and his band (Dave Keuning, Mark Stoermer and Ronnie Vannucci) have adopted the dessert city’s ability to absorb all brands of culture and regurgitate it polished and sparkling with a danceable beat courtesy of Stuart Price, the pulse man behind Madonna’s Confessions on a Dancefloor and most recently Perfect Symmetry by Keane.
Bringing Price on board leans nicely towards their affection of British dance pop a la The Pet Shop Boys (who did an excellent remix of “Read My Mind” from Sam’s Town) and New Order. But even though The Killers wear their influences on their sleeves throughout the album, all the songs sound just like The Killers should sound – if that makes any sense.
Spaceman Joyride
The Killers continue to take chances on Day & Age. They add new layers of instruments on this album, even breaking out the sax on opening track “Losing Touch”. “Human” finds the band heading off to the disco while completely disregarding grammar with the now classic line “Are we human or are we dancer”.
The band employs Caribbean steel drums on the cruise ship number “I Can’t Stay” and dust off their best Duran Duran for “Joyride”, a bubbly track built around scorching 80’s synths and heaps of fun.
At times the band reward listeners with upbeat stories of dreams (“This Is Your Life”), sing-along songs perfect for road trips (“Neon Tiger”) as well as crazy tales of alien abduction (“Spaceman”), but rarely do they bore.
Goodnight, Travel Well
It’s hard to condemn the band for having so much fun, but they also get off course at the end on the miserable mess of a progressive farewell “Goodnight, Travel Well”. Sounding like the closing of a Vegas showcase featuring Lou Reed and Beth Gibbons from Portishead, the track seems endless and would have sounded better on last year’s B-Sides and rarities album Sawdust.
Fans will find plenty to love on Day & Age, while casual listeners can discover a band on the verge of conquering the world, or at least Las Vegas.
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