(Island/Universal)

Killers frontman sings about warm Vegas nights and broken hearts

With its tales of dusty desert highway and doomed young lovers, Flamingo has The Killers written all over it – Brandon Flowers actually wrote it as the fourth Killers album, but when the rest of the band decided to take a break after several years of touring, he went ahead and recorded it anyway as a solo project. Flamingo is a mixture of the alt-country twang and glamorous new wave pop that have characterised the last couple of Killers releases, and thanks to some heavyweight production from Daniel Lanois, Stuart Price and Brendan O’Brien, it sounds like a million bucks. The album’s greatest strength, though, is Brandon Flowers’ ability to write slow-burning songs that build towards stirring, dramatic choruses – Crossfire is an example of just such a song, and Jilted Lovers And Broken Hearts and Only The Young hit just the same FM radio sweet-spot. The lyrics, of course, are ridiculously over-the-top – when Flowers is not spouting Las Vegas-related nonsense about rolling dice and how the house always wins, he’s singing about holy fountains and walking on wires in front of ten thousand angels – but that’s just part of the charm. My favourite track is Hard Enough, a duet with Jenny Lewis of Rilo Kiley that has the elegant, country-tinged sadness of Stevie Nicks’ Bella Donna, but if you’re a Killers fan, you’ll definitely find something to like here.

****

ALASDAIR DUNCAN

Comments (1)

Write Comment
Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they may be edited. Poster's IP addresses are logged.
Name:
Comment:
Code:*