the killers - are they killer?

lol ned i thought you couldnt stand them
softening over the years i guess

Perhaps! It was never a deep loathing, more like a ‘wait what?’ Brandon’s messianism is actually enjoyably ridiculous now.

I feel the same

i don't think anyone would have expected that they'd have the most longevity out of their whole wave of bands, or that they'd end up putting out their best album 16 years after their debut

It feels like it took several years for people (ok, me) to recognize the band's (Brandon's?) ridiculousness as a feature and not a bug. He seems to have figured it out a lot better than Bono ever did, balancing camp and pretentious grandiosity in a more convincing manner.

Helping Flowers' case immensely is that he doesn't read, or at least doesn't drop book titles in interviews

Ignorance is bliss.

i have inadvertently read some of the lyrics for the new album, and hoo boy

think it's gonna work tho

all their lyrics are hoo boy

lol seriously, if the lyrics were a barrier to entry i would have given up at the debut

My wife and I are rewatching The OC and just saw the episode where they played The Bait Shop (their very own Peach Pit!), Flowers looked so young!

from said episode:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMC1KbvWkAAKnhl.jpg

lol he looks 12 years old!

flowers has an unparalleled ability to completely sell utter nonsense so i'm not worried

yes this is 100% otm

Helping Flowers' case immensely is that he doesn't read, or at least doesn't drop book titles in interviews

― So who you gonna call? The martini police (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, July 23, 2021 6:04 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

“When I was writing these songs, I was thinking of things like Sherwood Anderson’s book Winesburg, Ohio or that book Pastures of Heaven [by John Steinbeck],” Flowers says, “where’s it’s all these short stories that take place in this one setting. For some reason, I had the audacity to try it myself. Once I realized they were going to take place here and they were going to be true stories, everything just really fell in our laps.”

weirdly a slightly early version of this has leaked - it's missing the spoken intros they mentioned in interviews were added at the last minute.

as they've suggested from all the interviews they've gone in a more folk-rock direction for this one but the arrangements are just as lush and lovely as the last album. apparently the follow-up that's already in the works is shaping up to be a more direct continuation of imploding the mirage though, so i'm looking forward to that too.

“When I was writing these songs, I was thinking of things like Sherwood Anderson’s book Winesburg, Ohio or that book Pastures of Heaven [by John Steinbeck],” Flowers says, “where’s it’s all these short stories that take place in this one setting. For some reason, I had the audacity to try it myself. Once I realized they were going to take place here and they were going to be true stories, everything just really fell in our laps.”

― STOCK FIST-PUMPER BRAD (BradNelson), Tuesday, August 3, 2021

dear god in heaven Flower Boy's thinking of narrative.

Just wait for his first full novel, And The Dude Saw The Sky

Enjoy some rock

Stream @TheKillers' new album 'Pressure Machine' featuring a song with @Phoebe_Bridgers https://t.co/LiQqxQW22Q pic.twitter.com/PGOY1YxJqJ

— Stereogum (@stereogum) August 13, 2021

i don't think flowers' new found focus on narrative really does anything at all for this album but it's solidly their second best behind the last, just for consistency & the strength of the arrangements

Wow at this album. This is basically the electric "Nebraska" Springsteen never brought to fruition, updated for the times. Drugs, withering small town alienation, losing your religion, etc. I have no idea who listens to the Killers, but I wonder what they'll make of this.

Me, I find it astounding and galvanizing that a band I'd been indifferent to for most of their career should release an album I've really liked two years in a row.

(Not saying this is nearly as good as "Nebraska," I should stress - that's a unique masterpiece of a one-off - but this album is some heavy stuff, at least to my ears, however on the nose so much of it is.)

it really seems that having producers who can help them to really flesh out their arrangements has made a huge difference

this album is awesome, i love "cody" so much

astonished that flowers' attempts to get into granular storytelling do not weigh this album down one bit (not that he's ditched the broad, bombastic thing, those eagles still have "glory-painted wings")

also think this is better than imploding the mirage :O

I'm not ready to deliver a judgment, but there are moments like "Terrible Thing" where the Nebraska tropes -- the echo, perfectly arranged harmonica -- try to deepen narratives that don't exist except as Springsteeisms.

Every predictable image is so damn perfectly paced.

Holy shit, yeah, this is fantastic. Even better than I'd hoped and definitely even better than Mirage. So many great moments - really digging "Cody", "In the Car Outside" and "Runaway Horses" most on first blush, but it's all pretty great.

the obvious springsteen songs i can easily lose as they do nothing more than springsteen did, the upbeat Triffids/Big Country stuff is great.

Triffids/Big Country stuff is great.

Which songs were these?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWdeRkr6dLs

decent single

Enjoying this but boy, that's a blatant Erasure riff they drop in

gosh yeah.
given the bronski beat riff that brandon used for his solo debut,
and now this,
i think it's clear that he/the band just need to go the whole hog and make an 80s synth album to get it out of their system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-JdPeMQoAU

seems like they are indeed making an 80s synth album. this one's a pretty good new order pastiche, just with heavy autotune for whatever reason

Do these guys do anything original?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH2P73cwZMk

lol they made a "born slippy .nuxx"

Too bad they don´t do ipod ads anymore, this would have been a no-brainer for that

Too bad they don´t do ipod ads anymore, this would have been a no-brainer for that

Heard a Christmas song while I was shopping that sounded like someone parodying very early Springsteen, and was curious enough to look it up. Of course it turns out to be the Killers, "A Great Big Sled."