The Killers - Day & Age

Well, if there’s one thing the Killers aren’t, it’s boring. Four years ago, the band burst out of nowhere with its terrifically dark, neon-flecked debut “Hot Fuss.” Main influences: David Bowie, Duran Duran, and the Cure. Result? A heady midnight mix of shimmering synths and spiky guitars that sounded like the soundtrack to some swirling ’80s time warp.

“Sam’s Town,” their 2006 follow-up, was a massive change of pace. Wildly ambitious and just a bit pretentious, it saw the band aping stadium rockers Bruce Springsteen and U2 in an attempt to make some kind of pop music version of “The Great Gatsby” — a “Great American Album” that would somehow sum up America today.

Unsurprisingly, it failed, floundering amid clunky lyrics and a rather scary Bono fixation from lead singer Brandon Flowers. Except Bono in his prime could actually come up with a few clever lines. The best we got from Flowers was some half-baked, Kerouac-esque pap about horizons, highways and diners.

On their third album, “Day & Age,” the Killers take “Sam’s Town” to the next level: They’re not just going to sum up contemporary America, they’re going to sum up the entire bloody world. Clue’s in the names: “Day & Age” is hardly the most low-key title for an album, and lurking within it are other pompously titled tracks like “The World We Live In,” the to-the-point “Human” and, my personal favorite, the humbly named “This Is Your Life.”

The lyrics are just as painfully pretentious. If you thought the absurd, grammar-be-damned chorus of first single “Human” was bad enough — and yes, “Are we human, or are we dancer?” is what he’s saying — then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. After hearing “Goodnight, Travel Well,” in which Flowers informs us matter-of-factly that his “spirit moans with a sacred pain,” whatever the hell that means, you’ll join me in campaigning for a return to the gender-bending, tongue-in-cheek fun of “Somebody Told Me.” The silliness of “you had a boyfriend / who looked like a girlfriend” has never felt so far away. Now all the Killers do is harp on about “souls” and “flesh,” “universes” and “holy suns,” like they’re trying to make a pop adaptation of Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason.”

Luckily, though the lyrics are so bad they make me want to take some duct tape to Brandon Flowers’ mouth, the music on “Day & Age” is often rather interesting. A far cry from the staid, middle-of-the-road rock sound of “Sam’s Town,” “Day & Age” is an interesting melting pot of genres, a queasy but oddly hypnotic mélange of pop, funk, jazz and prog rock. Quivering synths and choppy guitars make the usual appearance, but there are also saxophone solos and bossa nova rhythms, which, surprisingly enough, work quite well.

Opener “Losing Touch” spins and eddies with sonic invention, veering from blaring, horn-driven verse to dreamy, bass-popping chorus. If you can ignore the preposterous lyrics, there’s a lot to enjoy. The same goes for “The World We Live In,” a wildly overblown, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink synth number that almost matches the sweeping grandeur of its title.

There are also a couple of tracks so totally out there, so different from the Killers’ usual fare — though what exactly that is has become increasingly difficult to determine — that they deserve special mention. “Joy Ride” is a funky slice of white-boy disco, awkward and silly in all the best ways. It sounds like the band has been listening to David Bowie’s plastic soul era — think “Fame” or “Young Americans” — and the influence pays off beautifully. “I Can’t Stay,” meanwhile, shuffles along on a jazzy back-beat of pattering congas and marimbas, like Stan Getz covering “Tainted Love.” It’s more of a genre exercise than a real song, but there’s something infectiously wide-eyed and innocent about its experimentation.

Of course, not everything works. “Human” is a painfully antiseptic slice of ’80s-inflected Europop, so utterly boring musically that you can’t help but focus on the lyrics, and boy are they disastrous. If only the chorus did say “are we human or are we denser,” because in this case the answer to that question would be very simple. “A Dustland Fairytale” is also a pseudo-symbolic mess, a desperately “epic” and “sweeping” rocker that sounds like a tuneless cover version of U2’s “Where The Streets Have No Name.”

All in all, though, “Day & Age” is no disaster, and, oddly enough, something about the Killers’ wildly overblown ambition is quite refreshing. Sure, a lot of the time their experiments fall flat, but there is something nice about how unafraid the Killers are of looking ridiculous. Just check out the video to “Human,” in which the band looks lost on the way to some absurd, zoo-themed costume party. So while “Day & Age” may not transform the life of every listener, which is clearly its aim, it does provide some enjoyment; not least being the chance to hear a band that’s unafraid to try new things.


"Day & Age" released 19 November, 2008 by Island Records.
Images courtesy of Island Records and Empire Online.
Published in the Daily Princetonian.