The Killers Third Album Thread

Andrea · Aug 26, 2008

Awwww yeah. Sweet!

lpboarder · Aug 26, 2008

Outstanding, after seeing them live for the first time less than a year ago they really grew on me. I'm sure they will be making a Bay Area stop next year.

Thanks for all the updated info!

The_Cool_Cow · Sep 1, 2008

A very long article from NME posted today. Its a very good read, and has some new information about the album:

Brandon Flowers: "I'm obsessive about a lot of aspects of the band -I don't want to mess it all up"

Charming, mercurial and neurotic about the way he's perceived, The Killers' Brandon Flowers wants everything just so. He tells James McMahon about his obsessions

Monday, 1 September 2008

Here's a puzzler for you: what does Brandon Flowers have in common with Kim Jong-Il, Isaac Asimov, pro-wrestling legend Andre The Giant, and 18.1 per cent of the American population? Answer: all suffer or suffered from pteromechanophobia, a chronic, debilitating fear of flying.

"I've been going to see a doctor," recounts The Killers' lead singer in his band's Las Vegas rehearsal space, a nondescript unit on the fringes of an industrial estate, around five minutes' taxi ride from the relentless glitz of the strip. "I have this routine now that's taught me how to control my breathing and it's helped me not get so tense when I'm in the air." He chuckles, nervously. "At my very worst, I turned down a trip with U2 on their Vertigo jet. It was so bad I opted to stay in Poland instead." He sighs. "I really, really wanted to be on that plane..."

What scares him so much about it? "The lack of control. The doctor has been teaching me to consider the whole experience as an outsider – like you're detached, almost like you're actually watching yourself. It's been amazing, and it's really been helping me let go of not having any control. That's the worst thing about it. The short breaths come and you've lost control."

And there's that word again, control; a word – in the time I spend in his company – that is never ten breaths away from Flowers' mouth, via a dusty, pillow-soft accent that nods to his Nevada-via-Utah heritage. "I grew up being a fan of the great rock'n'roll bands," he says. "Now we know something great is in our grasp, and we want to get it right." He smiles, nervously. Flowers is nervous about a lot of things. "I'm obsessive about a lot of aspects of the band – ridiculous stuff, really, like T-shirt designs and other little things. I don't want to mess it all up."

Yet the absence of control is something Flowers – alongside guitarist Dave Keuning, bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr – is going to have to accept sooner rather than later. Their third album proper, Day and Age, the first Killers release since last November's B-sides and rarities compilation Sawdust, is tentatively scheduled for a November release, despite the fact that Flowers states that the lyrics are only "30 per cent done". The band is well aware that their latest outing will determine the relevance of the quartet, six years on from their initial inception, in a rapidly accelerated climate where fans grow bored of a band come track eight of their début album.

In such climes, to make it to a third album is pretty much astonishing. "At the very beginning, we just didn't have the time to even think about how we might be perceived," says Flowers. "We wrote these songs, and before we knew it we were signed and on the road. We were so busy around the time of the first album [2004's Hot Fuss] that someone just handed us a stack of pictures and we just picked one for the cover. That's not really the right way to go about it..." Does he regret that? Flowers puffs out his cheeks. "Oh, yeah."

The signs that the audience they desire for album three still exists are promising; last weekend The Killers headlined the Reading and Leeds festivals, one notch above Bloc Party, another band who find themselves looking to affirm their place within the scheme of things third time around. Yet, where the London band have sought reinvention with their art-electro infused Intimacy – at the fulcrum of the most hard rock-heavy billing the legendary festival has booked in years (two of the three headline slots went to the resurgent Metallica and a reformed Rage Against The Machine) – the Las Vegas band offered no such deviation from the plot. They continue to fluctuate between the showbiz, synth-heavy Anglophile indie of old, and their more recent forages into Springsteen-indebted blue collar rock. The two make uneasy bedfellows, but in front of an audience evenly comprising both the daytime radio listening casual, and an impressive brethren of predominantly young hardcore fans (you only have to scan the forum entries of the band's official website to understand the wealth of devotion), their performances at Reading and Leeds offered sporadic clues as to why they've made it this far.

For one thing, the last six years have seen The Killers amass a catalogue that's endearingly hooky ("Mr Brightside", "When You Were Young", "Jenny (Was a Friend of Mine"), forthcoming album cut "Starman"). For another, they're spearheaded by one of the most enduringly fascinating frontmen in recent memory. Staunchly nationalist (Flowers proudly shows me the Nevada flag draped on the wall of the building's kitchen – "something to do with us killing Mexicans, I think..."), part of a huge community of Mormons who practise their faith in and around his home city (he says the only conflict that arises from his faith is "struggling with what I'm supposed to do and what I'm supposed to be"), and with political beliefs he describes as "in the middle" (he says that he still hasn't decided which way he'll vote in the US presidential election), Flowers is far from your average popstar – and he knows it.

"I think a lot of people in bands [talk about liberal politics] because they're artists and they're supposed to be on the left, but I've spent a lot of time trying to work out who I am and I always come back to the middle. I don't really want to talk about this – I think acknowledging I'm different from people in most bands is enough of a statement in itself..."

Yet he's kind, too (he opens the fridge and asks me to help myself upon arrival – something I might have done had it been stocked with anything other than around 100 cans of Red Bull). Clearly devoted to his wife, Tana – a long-term relationship which began when she was working as the shop manager of a branch of Urban Outfitters – and his one-year-old son, he is currently plotting the logistics of taking them out on the road with him when the band begin their next tour.

And he couldn't be more different from his band mates – Stoermer arrives on the day of our interview dryly recounting the previous evening he spent in a local strip club; Vannucci bullishly tells me: "I think the less time me and you spend together is for the better"; and Keuning arrives in a frankly ridiculous home-made T-shirt that features the band's busts engraved into the side of Mount Rushmore, and utters little more than five words in my presence. Among such company it's hard to deny that Flowers is likeable: he's funny, self-deprecating,and almost charmingly neurotic about the way he and the band are perceived.

It's hard to envisage the man who bestrode the group's ill-fated 2007 Glastonbury headline slot in a lemon sequinned jump suit as one so insecure that the band now refuse to give photo pit access to magazines, preferring to pump out shots to the media via the group's official photographer. It's all part of maintaining a degree of "control" that Flowers insists is crucial.

"You grow up as a music fan frothing at the mouth at the romance of it all – over Depeche Mode pictures and Bowie album sleeves, and it's hard not being able to control those things. I mean, the magazines won't let you pick the pictures they use. Some magazines won't review us live now because of it, but it's worth it to feel like I have some control."

During my time with them, the band play me two new songs that will appear on Day and Age. The first, "Neon Tiger", could segue comfortably from the giddy, pop-heavy tracklisting of Hot Fuss and features a prophetic middle eight that sees Flowers almost talking in tongues. The second is the aforementioned "Starman", which nods to Bowie circa "Lodger", and contains flourishes of pomp that reflect the singer's current listening habits. "To be honest," he says, laughing, "I only really listen to ELO these days."

In the wake of Reading and Leeds, Flowers also confirmed a handful of song titles – "Goodnight, Travel Well", "Joyride", "I Can't Stay", "Losing Touch" – while the record sees the band experimenting with loops and drum patterns for the very first time, despite Flowers insisting that he isn't "sure" about them just yet. "To be honest, every time we make a record, I just hope I can write another 'When You Were Young' [the band's 2006 mega hit]. Does this record do that? That's not for me to say, but there are songs on there I do think are pretty... special."

All of which suggests that things bode well for The Killers. But whether on land or in the air, Flowers might just want to remember the techniques his doctor taught him if he feels its reception is slipping out of his control.

James McMahon is features editor of 'NME'

Flowers in fashion

The gold lamé suit

Killers fans might have strained to hear the band's unfortunate 2007 Glastonbury headline set, but Flowers could be seen from the furthest reaches of the muddy fields. The frontman wore an elaborate gold lamé three-piece suit, telling the crowd: "I'm from Las Vegas! I can't understand why more people don't wear sequins..."

White tux and eyeliner

At the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards in Miami, where they won an award for break-up anthem "Mr Brightside", Flowers was snapped in a white dinner jacket, a black T-shirt, black trousers, laced tuxedo and black eyeliner. The singer often performs in a white suit jacket – a look immortalised in Rufus Wainwright's musical homage to The Killers' frontman, "Tulsa": "Your suit was the whitest thing since you-know-who..."

The saviour of rock

At Live 8, all the band wore white suits, Messiah-style. It was to be a choice the frontman would regret. They weren't the only ones all in white – so was Madonna.

Mormon chic

Flowers is perhaps rock's most famous Mormon; one wonders if this look might have been inspired by his faith. Mormon fashion is simple, avoiding jewellery, bright colours and loud patterns, while men typically wear suits.

The ringmaster

For the band's tour of their second album, Sam's Town, Flowers adopted the look of an old American ringmaster, wearing a spaghetti-western inspired bushy moustache, waistcoat, boots, and upside-down bow tie.
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So, from this im guessing that Spaceman has been renamed "Starman". Its inclusion among Mr. Brightside and When You Were Young suggests that maybe it will be a single. Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine wasnt a single though, so I am not sure right now. Regardless, the reviewer seemed to enjoy what he heard of the album, wchich is good.

EDIT: Never mind, Starman is not the renamed Spaceman. It was a mistake on the part of the writer, so the song is still Spaceman.

The_Cool_Cow · Sep 13, 2008

Okay, an insane amount of information has come out in the next little while, so prepare for some long reading. Oh, by the way Starman was a typo, not a renaming of Spaceman. Anyway on with the first articles, a collection of album previews from Portugal, I believe. Wherever it was from, whoever translated it wasnt very good. Here are the aricles:

You know The Killers from "When You Were Young", for example. And also this band has a new album finished.
Selected guests were allowed to listen to it. Yesterday [Note: September 1st] in London, reporters from all of Europe were invited, and 1LIVE was there, too. In a hotel room of a very expensive hotel, everybody was showered [don't know if this translation is correct ^^] with the new record of The Killers. Under high safety precautions: no laptops, no cellphones, no cameras. The new record is going to be called "Day And Age", 13 songs are on it and it sounds very much like the first album, very poppy. Stuart Price produced it, the guy who worked for Madonna. The album is going to be released on November 22nd and in early 2009, The Killers are going on tour in Germany with their new songs.

The Killers challenge the electro-pop
Day and Age is thow the Killers named their new album. Despite the launch date, it's only scheduled for November 24, Antena 3 already heard part of it! Sergio Ricardo was in London to hear 5 songs from the new album of the "Somebody Told Me" band and to interview the drummer Ronnie Vanucci. Stuart Price (aka Jacques Lu Cont or Thin White Duke) was put in charge of the production of "Day and Age". The Killers were searching for the British producer to write this new album, due to the success of the remix the producer made for the single "Mr Brightside" from the debut album, "Hot Fuss". The remix for "Mr. Brightside (Jacques Lu Cont) was published in the album of b-sides and rarities of the Killers, "Sawdust." In the new "Day and Age", the Killers are approaching again the sound of the first album ("Hot Fuss"). Strong in electro-pop sound (influence of the producer), with a very rich instrumental part - it does provide a very varied album with each song different from the other. Now we just have to wait until November to hear the album in full!

Killers want to play in Portugal
BLITZ interviewed the bassist of the Killers in London. Learn all about the new album.
Stoermer, a former student of philosophy, spoke about the album of the Killers, Day and Age, which BLITZ heard minutes before the interview.
"There are some of my favourite songs by the Killers," guarantees the bassist, who chooses "I Can't Stay" as his favorite, a track that features a harp and other string instruments.
About the fact that the Killers have never played in Portugal, Mark Stoermer ensures that it's on their plans.
"We have friends in other bands who told us that it's a great place to play. We want to go to Portugal too," said Mark Stoermer.
"Spaceman", "Losing Touch," "I Can't Stay," "Human" and "Fairytale Dustland" are the tracks that BLITZ heard today in London that confirmed a return to the use of synthetizers like their first album, Hot Fuss.
More on this interview and the new work of the Killers soon, in the magazine BLITZ.

In the Studio

“Our Most Pop-y” The Killers Get A Synth-Disco Makeover By Madonna’s Producer

The Killers learned a thing or two about predictions after 2006, when singing Brandon Flowers said their second album, Sam’s Town, would go down as one of the best of the past 20 years. This time, “there are no proclamations to make,” bassist Mark Stoermer says, “We’ll just put it out and see what happens.” Ideas for the new full-length started in the isolation and recovery that follows two straight years of nonstop touring and recording. “We were away from each other for four months, sending demos back and forth over the computer with Garage Band,” Stoermer says, “Nobody was stressed out.” Reunited in their own spankin’ new Las Vegas studio, he adds, “everyone’s in a better mood.” Contributing to the good vibes was producer Stuart Price, the Brit electro-disco king who remixed the Killers “Mr. Brightside” and reconnected Madonna with her groove for Confessions on a Dance Floor. “He clicks with us really well,” Stoermer says. Price gave the disco-tinged track tentatively called “Vibration” a “late-‘70s New York, Stones feel,” Stoermer says, and added futuristic noise to the straight-up rocker “Spaceman”-but stopped well short of a wall-of-sound approach. “There’s nothing extra,” Stoermer adds. “I thinks its our most pop-y album but at the same time our most experimental.”
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The most interesting article about the new album yet was just posted today, from the Guardian UK. Its very long, but interesting, so its a good read:

Change we can believe in

The Killers may just be the strangest band in America. They also want to be the biggest in the world. Craig McLean follows Brandon Flowers and co as they look to reinvent themselves again

Craig McLean The Observer, Sunday September 14 2008
Article history

Las Vegas, 23 July 2008

Late morning in Henderson, the nice suburban neighbourhood Brandon Flowers calls home, and the Killers frontman is in his kitchen. He is, as is his wont, fretting. He has to leave soon for another day's work at the band's new recording studio. This is in an anonymous Las Vegas industrial space, about a 15-minute drive from where each of the four members of the band live: Flowers, Dave Keuning (the guitarist), Mark Stoermer (bass), Ronnie Vannucci (drums). Battle Born they have called it, following the motto on their state flag, a reference to Nevada joining the Union side during the American Civil War.

'It's exciting to branch out. We were talking about the studio maybe being a business venture, hiring it out,' says Flowers. 'It's been great to go in and not have to worry about who's listening.' As the Killers work on their third album, a record that has to top everything they've done before - otherwise the super-zealous Flowers might as well just give up - privacy is paramount. They recorded its predecessor, 2006's Sam's Town, in a studio inside the Palms Casino Resort, one of Vegas's ritziest joints. 'And it's great not to worry about who's going to pop in because they're gambling and they're a high-roller and they want to see the fucking studio.' As befits a man of religious faith, Flowers doesn't swear much. So when he does you get a real measure of his exasperation. 'Playboy bunnies too!' Family man Flowers didn't like that either. 'There was all craziness at the Palms. So now, definitely we're more productive.'

The Killers are America's oddest successful act: four members who look like they should be in four different groups; working-class kids from heartland America - rather than the cosmopolitan coasts - with a love of flamboyance. Committed lovers of Eighties British pop (as evidenced on their first album, Hot Fuss) turned stadium-rock rabble-rousers who dug Bruce Springsteen and the Wild West on the follow-up, Sam's Town

Alongside their joyous disco and rock anthems sit dark songs about trauma, salvation and death: 'Uncle Jonny' dealt with Flowers's cocaine-crazed relative's conviction that aliens were after his sperm (so he tried to shoot his testicles off); 'Bling (Confession of a King)' told how Flowers's father recanted alcoholism and Catholicism to become a Mormon.

The singer's love of the Morrissey B-side 'Sister I'm a Poet' led to the writing of the band's 'Murder Trilogy' - 'Jenny Was a Friend of Mine', 'Midnight Show' and 'Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf'. Flowers ploughed this macabre route more deeply with 'Where is She?', inspired by the murder of a 14-year-old Scottish girl, Jodi Jones, by her goth boyfriend in 2003. Flowers wrote the song from the viewpoint of the victim's mother, not stopping to think of the upset this might cause.

Oh yes. At 27, Flowers is five years younger than his bandmates and the oddest of them all. Lovely, but odd. Phobic about flying, and about the number 621 (his birthday is 21 June). Like his parents and siblings, a Mormon. A young husband and the father to a 13-month-old son, Ammon. Thoughtful and considerate, but also a control freak. An arch-patriot who doesn't seem sure of his politics. He was once quoted as saying he was 'sympathetic to George Bush' and when I'm with him, he mentions approvingly a recent copy of Newsweek which bore the headline 'What Bush Did Right'. But he recently retracted that earlier quote, saying 'I'm in the middle with my beliefs, like everyone else' and to me he talks enthusiastically about Barack Obama.

And he's ambitious. Flowers wants the Killers' name in big lights, for ever and ever, amen. And he'll put in the micro-managing effort to achieve what it takes.

'Brandon will turn in 14-hour days, day after day after day,' Stuart Price says admiringly. The Reading-born musician and producer (previous bands: Les Rhythmes Digitales, Zoot Woman; previous clients: Madonna, Seal) has become, in some ways, the fifth member of the Killers. He did the 'Thin White Duke' remix of 'Mr Brightside' that the band loved so much. Then, as exploratory recordings, he produced 'Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf' and 'Sweet Talk', which appeared on last November's B-sides-and-more compilation Sawdust. The band had tried and failed to record 'Sweet Talk' for Sam's Town.

Price and the Killers clicked. On his first visit to Price's home studio in London, lifelong Anglophile Flowers noted the pictures of David Bowie and Brian Eno on the wall. 'I knew we'd found our man,' recalls Flowers. Now Price is working with them on the follow-up to Sam's Town and Sawdust, and to Hot Fuss before them. Together those albums have sold 12m copies worldwide, helping make the Killers - as one US magazine had it - America's Best British Band. Quick-paced computer whizz Price, the son of two classical pianists, has proved a great foil for Flowers. 'It's in him like it's in us,' says the singer. 'Brandon's meticulous over things and really works at it,' says the producer. 'He's one of those people where it's in his blood. It's a real admirable quality.'

But in Las Vegas, even 14-hour days aren't enough right now. Flowers, with whom most of the band's songs begin, is agonising over a couple of unfinished numbers.

Actually, right now he's happier talking about clothes. He's the perfect age to be a Nirvana kid but Flowers hated grunge, in part because it was so dowdy, partly 'because it sucked the fun out of things'. His teenage love of British music was heard through a prism of style: Echo & the Bunnymen's trenchcoats, Morrissey's flowers, Bowie's chameleonism, Pet Shop Boys' sartorial wit, Oasis's post-football casual swagger. 'I almost follow the music through fashion.'

Thus the Killers were dandies from day one. They blazed out of Sin City wearing pastel jackets and make-up and eye-watering shirts. As the laconic, slightly spacey Keuning will recall of their first show as a foursome, in a Las Vegas club called the Junkyard in August 2002, 'even then, people were like, "Who do these guys think they are?" Well, anybody can wear a T-shirt and jeans. But this is a show and we want to look good and we want to have fun. I think I had a pink shirt on.' Pause. 'I got rid of that shirt.'

After the British Eighties disco look (and sound) of Hot Fuss, the Killers went native for Sam's Town. It was a record that sounded like widescreen America and it had the boots, bootlace ties and waistcoats to prove it.

'With Sam's Town,' says wisecracking life-and-soul Vannucci, 'I think we had just been on tour [promoting Hot Fuss], visiting all these new places, being detached from our desert home.' Indeed: before the release of Hot Fuss, Brandon Flowers had never had a passport. 'Being away from family, remembering where you come from, was probably heavy on Brandon's mind,' the drummer continues. 'And one thing just flowed into the next. It was never, "OK guys, let's dress up like fucking cowboys!"' Vannucci thinks that look might have started with the Anton Corbijnshoot for the album sleeve with the photographer 'playing dressing up...' But, he insists, this was not post-Joshua Tree-style affectation. 'Vegas is not about the Palms Hotel casino and black shiny shirts. If you're local, it's more about horseshit and gunsmoke! So that's what we brought to the stage.' And, in the drummer's case, an extravagant My Name is Wyatt Earp moustache.

Anyway, Flowers wants to underscore this: that look, and that sound, they're all in the past. The Killers as extras from Deadwood? It's so 2007. For album proper number three, the band are going wilder still. 'Sam's Town was very specific. It was a return home album,' says the quiet Stoermer, a former medical student with whom still waters run very deep. 'This new album is perhaps more progressive and... I don't want to say global, but it's more universal.'

On the Killers' new album, to be called Day and Age, there are synths involved. There are big rousing tunes, for sure. But there are also harpsichords, moonscapes, saxophones, brass, strings, feathers and fur and steel drums. Steel drums?

'Seriously, the last time I heard steel drums was in The Little Mermaid!' Flowers exclaims. 'I don't know if that's a good reason or not to use them.'

Right then. Studio time. Brandon Flowers leaves his kitchen, still fretting.

Dublin, 20-21 August

Fifteen minutes after they come offstage at the Academy in the Irish capital, the Killers' small and busy dressing room under the stairs is sweltering.

Ronnie Vannucci is forced to stand in the corridor outside to talk to Jack Black. The actor-cum-comedy-rocker's band Tenacious D are in town to support Metallica at Marlay Park. Vannucci and Black are guffawing about the perennial rock star problem of overly sweaty gussets. Brandon Flowers, still wired and still perspiring from the performance, sits on a chair, both knees doing the St Vitus Dance. He's digging into a full size box of bran flakes, shovelling the dry cereal into his mouth but taking care to avoid the raisins. Mark Stoermer idly fingers a leather case containing champagne and Guinness. It's a gift from Dublin's favourite sons, and the band the Killers most want to emulate. A card inside reads: 'Welcome to Dublin from The U2'ers'. Their manager, Paul McGuinness, stands by the doorway, chatting. 'He owns the space around him,' Flowers will later chuckle. 'Makes our manager nervous!'

Flowers, too, is a little nervous. Tonight's 850-capacity club show, a warm-up for tomorrow night's show at Marlay Park, which is itself a warm-up for headline slots at the Reading and Leeds festivals, was great. The band played a quasi-acoustic version of 'Smile Like You Mean It', with Flowers at the piano. Their decidedly strange collaboration with Lou Reed, last year's 'Tranquilize' single, worked well. Two new songs, 'Neon Tiger' and 'Spaceman', were greeted enthusiastically by the crowd. But Flowers's racing brain is already on to the next hurdle. Chatting to McGuinness, he discovers that U2's new album is scheduled for release a week before theirs. How do they follow that? 'So there's U2, Oasis, Snow Patrol, Keane, Kaiser Chiefs...' He ticks off the autumn's big albums on his fingers (the U2 record later shifts to next year). Shit. Lot of competition. Flowers chomps at his cereal with agitated gusto.

You might say they haven't made things easy for themselves. The Killers interrupted recording on Day and Age to embark on a month-long tour: a handful of small North American shows followed by this run of European festival dates. Then they are heading to London to hook up with Stuart Price again and finish the album. Everything is running impossibly close to deadline.

After midnight the Killers leave the club and drive the few hundred yards back to their hotel. Flowers's wife Tana and infant son are upstairs but he lingers in the lobby with a laptop, poring over new band photographs till 1am. Some feature the four-piece seemingly standing on the moon. In others, Flowers is wearing a Dolce & Gabbana jacket with elaborate fur and feather epaulettes designed by British fashionista Fee Doran. She was introduced to Flowers by Stuart Price, for whom she once made a black leather catsuit. She's most famous for making the white hooded jumpsuit Kylie Minogue wore in the 'Can't Get You Out of My Head' video.

'Sci-fi jungle!' says Vannucci, jokingly, of the new look that the band - well, the more outré Flowers and Keuning - will be rocking. 'It's the new emo! No longer neo-synth fetishists, we're sci-fi jungle! No more Wyatt Earp moustache, although I could grow it back in a few hours...'

The next day Flowers and I sit down with tea and cookies in the deserted hotel restaurant. Last night, once he got over his collywobbles about the U2 album, he seemed friendly and relaxed but today, talking about the new album properly for the first time, there are nerves.

I say to Flowers: you said that Sam's Town was about embracing more of your own culture. Did you achieve that?

'Well, what's goofy is, America didn't care! Over here in the UK they did. It's sitting alongside Hot Fuss [in sales]. But in America it did half of what Hot Fuss did - 1.5m rather than 3m. So it just shows you how cynical people can be. We were trying to do something heartfelt - and it was heartfelt.'

How did an avowedly American record fail to sell well in America?

'It was kind of cursed from the start. The press were really rough on it.' The Killers were particularly aggrieved with a two-out-of-five review in Rolling Stone. 'I mean, just for having 'When You Were Young' on it, it deserves better than what it got. That song will be around for ever.'

Did Americans think you were trying too hard to be Americans?

'Maybe. We came out with Hot Fuss and were wearing suits and there's make-up and there's glitz. Definitely they saw [the Sam's Town look] as being contrived. I absolutely understand that now when I look at it. It's a never-ending battle for me. We were these poor kids and the whole idea of being a band was to put ourselves out there as this glamorous thing. Almost the opposite of the Strokes - these wealthy kids who are these dirty rock'n'rollers. Instead of dirtying it up, it was about excess and overindulgence and names and Gucci. It's almost a hip hop thing. Bling, that's kinda what it was like.'

Improbable as it may seem, the none-more-vanilla Flowers is hip hop in other ways - shooting his mouth off, proclaiming his own greatness while panning others. It's not the Killers' fault that Sam's Town didn't sell as well as Hot Fuss at home - it was 'cynical' America which didn't 'get' the album. He's open in his desire for the Killers to be a stadium-sized act, to catch up with Coldplay and join up with U2 on the top 'pedestal... They're getting old. You know there's going to be a coupla songs on [U2's new] record you're just going to love. They're unbelievable. But there's gotta be... I dunno, it feels like it's time.'

Last time we spoke he accused Thom Yorke of wasting his talent by not writing such catchy tunes any more. He laid into Green Day for un-American activity: recording a concert DVD in Milton Keynes ('I just thought it was really cheap. To go to a place like England and sing American Idiot...'). Now, he admits ruefully, 'that didn't help us out either [in America]. People love Green Day. Anyone that maybe would have been on the fence with us, that was a real decider that they didn't like us.' Flowers regrets the diss, then, but mainly because it hit his own band's sales.

According to the man who made it, meanwhile, Sam's Town was directly influenced by Springsteen and was one of the best albums of the past 20 years. These vainglorious quotes are still following the Killers round now.

'Yeah, he shouldn't have said any of that crap!' says Keuning with a snort. 'I hadn't thought about Springsteen once... Now he's probably a little bit more careful. I didn't agree with the things he said. Those things don't necessarily represent the band. He was just excited about Sam's Town when he said that 20 years thing, but I had no idea how bad it was going to bite us in the ass.'

'The thing I love about Brandon is that he says whatever the fuck he thinks,' says Price. 'And he doesn't care if he's blowing six litres of smoke up his own arse or in someone else's face. That is so refreshing, to have someone that just goes: "Fuck it, I want to be the best and this is what I think." And he backs that up with hard work.'

He's a funny bloke, Brandon. He has a heart of gold, is thoroughly likable and is staggeringly charismatic on stage. He can write pop hits and stadium anthems seemingly at will. But he's also supremely jittery, occasionally paranoid and easily rattled. It's like he always has something to prove - a legacy, perhaps, of being the baby of his family. He's the youngest of six; his nearest sibling, Shane, is 12 years older than him. It's handsome, born-on-the-4th-of-July Shane (as mentioned in the lyrics to 'Sam's Town') whom young Brandon was always trying to catch up with.

All this can make him come over as aloof and distant. His interview posture is bolt upright like a schoolboy, or arms firmly folded like a shield. It all helps lead to statements of intent that read terribly baldly in print.

Why do you think many people have a problem with your ambition?

'I don't know. I guess they like it better if you just keep your head down and all that. I'm not sure what bothers them so much about it.'

Because they see you as a craven careerist?

'I've seen that before. The singer of Idlewild said I was like Pete Sampras. He could see it in my eyes - dead, cold, a drive, ready to step on whoever I need to. And I'm not like that at all.'

Anyway, golf is your game.

[Grinning] 'Yeah. Tiger Woods, please. But it's just about the songs.'

It's excitement rather than a rampant ego that propels you to talk up your records?

'Yes. That's it. I've never been able to explain it easily. I don't wake up and say, "I'm the greatest."'

That night the Killers play Marlay Park to a sold-out crowd of 32,000, the biggest audience they've ever drawn on their own (that is, other than when they've played at festivals). There is satisfaction within the Killers camp that Metallica didn't sell out the previous night. The 16-song set is blisteringly good. The by-now-traditional set-closing encore is the glorious 'All These Things That I've Done', Flowers's song about struggling to reconcile his Mormon faith with the temptations facing a man and a rock star. As Killers crowds always do, the entire park begins singing the chorus while the band are offstage, readying for the encore: 'I've got soul but I'm not a soldier...' It's spine-tingling to hear.

Throughout the show a member of the Killers' entourage takes pictures from the side of the stage. These days he is the only photographer allowed to shoot the band live. After gigs, the media are invited to pick shots that the band have selected to put up on a special website. Later I ask Flowers why such an edict is necessary.

'Ah-ha-ha,' he laughs nervously. He begins by saying that the ban on outside photographers was in response to publications tending to use the same kind of image repeatedly: him with his mouth wide open, singing. Or, as he puts it, 'the screaming moment... It just to got to be - well, for me, I didn't like it.'

And is it correct that you'll only be filmed head-on, not from underneath?

'Yeah. Why? It's a very unflattering place to have your picture taken. You can't avoid looking like you have a double chin, especially if you're singing and opening your mouth and screaming. It's a misrepresentation.'

But you're lean and in good shape.

'I'm lean. But I'm not as lean as the dreams of.... Iggy Pop and the good old days.'

Would you say you were vain, Brandon?

[Laughing] 'I don't know if it means I'm vain. I'm cautious!'

And you like being in control?

'Well, you know, it's our destiny that we're playing with here.'

Presumably you appreciate that your banning photographers from your shows will be construed as controlling and egomaniacal?

'Yeah, I don't understand that. I don't mind it. People can think what they want to think.'

London, 3 September

Last night the Killers partied. Brandon Flowers collected the award for Most Stylish Man at GQ's Men of the Year event at the Royal Opera House. He smoked cigarettes and drank champagne and ended the night at celeb hang-out Bungalow 8. He's a practising Mormon but not 100 per cent observant, although his son is named after a prophet in the Book of Mormon. How has having a child affected his faith?

'It's kind of solidified it.' He pauses, wary of discussing religion - he's enough of a student of music history to know that the holy rock'n'roller is a precarious route to go down. 'I feel like it's an arrogant thought to think we're an accident, or that we're this smart without a little bit of a help. I just think it's a miracle.'

For some people, childbirth reaffirms their faith in creationism; a higher power had a hand...

'Yeah, definitely. It's definitely made me... And it's made me a lot less selfish too, so it's good. I love music, but I look at it more as my job now than I did. Now I'm going off to work. Now I almost think I'm doing this for him and for his future. Everything's changed. There's all kinds of shit brewing in my brain. I wonder if it's weird that I get manicures! Ha ha ha! My dad didn't get manicures, I don't know if I should... Why do I? I dunno! Because they give you a massage at the end of it. It feels nice.'

We're talking in Olympic Studios in Barnes, south-west London. The Killers have two-and-a-half days to finish Day and Age. The tight schedule has meant they had to nix yesterday's planned recording session with Elton John: he and Flowers have written a Christmas song (the Killers' third), called 'Joseph, Better You Than Me'.

The band play me a handful of new songs. 'Human', the first single, is a Pet Shop Boys-style synth-pop zoomer that should please fans of 'Mr Brightside'. 'Losing Touch' is driven by blasts of dirty saxophone. 'I Can't Stay' is brilliantly wonky: steel drums, harpsichords and a shuffling rhythm which Keuning describes as 'stranded on an island', and which Flowers admits was taken from Unit 4+2's 1965 British No 1 'Concrete and Clay' (he heard it on the soundtrack to Rushmore). And on the 'Club Tropicana'-esque 'Joyride', the Killers got the funk.

On one listen it's thrilling, the sound of America's most adventurous big-hitters spinning off in umpteen new directions. As Stuart Price says: 'I think the wrongness is part of the thing that appeals to Europeans about the Killers.'

'A Dustland Fairytale' is more reminiscent of the grand rock of Sam's Town. Studded with punchy piano, it sounds like a Jim Steinman production. It features lines like 'slick chrome American prince', 'long brown hair and foolish eyes', and 'white trash county'. It's the story of how Flowers's mum and dad met - they were both aged 15 and lived on the same trailer park.

The song that's causing Flowers most trouble is 'Goodnight, Travel Well'. Set to be the album's closer and running to almost seven minutes, it's a tribute to Dave Keuning's recently deceased mother, and to Brandon Flowers's mum, who has a brain tumour (he says she's responding 'really well to the chemo and the radiation so far'). He needs to get the lyrics right: tender but not mawkish. I hear the unfinished version. It's a gothic symphony, bursting with brass and strings.

As Flowers describes it: 'It goes from being the darkest thing we've ever done before shooting up to the clouds at the end. Oh, it's a heartbreaker. It just rips your guts out.'

If Flowers can face singing it night after night, it should be a great main set closer.

'We use the analogy of too much chocolate. That's maybe how Killers shows have been in the past, sometimes it's too much - we don't have our ups and downs. It's been a real breath of fresh air doing the songs from Sawdust and the stripped down 'Smile Like You Mean it'. It's not just in your face the whole time. It really felt like a real band. A more mature...' Flowers stops and smiles. 'Men were up there playing.'

Right then. Studio time. The Killers have a little over 48 hours to nail the finale to the album that, if all goes to plan, will keep them on the road until the end of 2010. The only way is up. In terms of sound and in terms of stature, their ambition knows no bounds. If Brandon Flowers, baby of the family and baby of the band, has anything to do with it, the world's record-buying, concert-going masses will be moved.

'I have an unexplainable drive,' he cheerfully admits. 'I don't know exactly where it comes from, but it borders on obsession. There's something special about bringing that many people together and celebrating that way. I want that! I am greedy and selfish but I want that every night.'

Bigmouth strikes again: Brandon Flowers bitches
'I can see the Strokes play or Franz Ferdinand play and it's real, and I haven't gotten that from the Bravery. I think people will see through them.'
March 2005

'We have a song called "Midnight Show" and in America they love it. In England they don't move at all. What's wrong with them?'
April 2005

'What song do I hate? I think 'Daughters' by John Mayer would be a good candidate.'
2005

On Fall Out Boy: 'Emo is dangerous. There's a creature inside me that wants to beat all those bands to death.'
June 2006

On Thom Yorke: 'He should feel grateful that he's [been] given the gift to write pop songs - which he needs to write again.'
September 2006

On Green Day filming their American Idiot DVD in the UK: 'I saw it as a very negative thing towards Americans. It really lit a fire in me.'
October 2006

'I think people are lazy, and that goes for making music too.'
November 2006

· Day and Age (Mercury) will be released on 24 November
Click to expand...

So, lots of information. Currently the tracklist looks something like this:

- Joyride
- I Can't Stay
- Losing Touch
- Goodbye, Travel Well
- Neon Tiger
- Spaceman
- The Dustland Fairytale
- Vibrations
- Human

The more I hear about this album, the more amazing it seems. I can not wait for this.

Also, apparently 18 songs were recorded. According to the Portugal previews, though, there's 12 (or 13?) songs. So, im not sure. Anyway, what are your thoughts?

Andrea · Sep 15, 2008

Songs recorded/tracklisting?

Eeeeeek. I'm bouncing off the walls! I cannot wait to have this album in my hands. November, get here now, lol.

The_Cool_Cow · Sep 16, 2008

^ I think that that would be songs recorded. They recorded 19, 10 are on the album.

So, more information today. First off theres and article from Rolling Stone (http://www.rollingstone.com/blogs/smokingsection/2008/09/brandon-flowers-talks-day-age.php). It says that they listened to 5 songs (they mentioned Human, I Cant Stay, and Dustland Fairytale), and they said that each will blow your mind, and are the best things that the band has ever done. Sounds good to me.

In other news, the album has a confirmed 24/25 of November release date (I believe that 24th is for UK and 25th is everywhere else), and the single "Human" will be released on the 22nd of September. Here is the official press release:

DAY & AGE, THE KILLERS' FIRST NEW STUDIO ALBUM IN TWO YEARS, ARRIVES NOVEMBER 25th

FIRST SINGLE "HUMAN" PREMIERES WORLDWIDE SEPTEMBER 22nd

FROM ALBUM PRODUCED BY STUART PRICE

(Sept. 15, 2008 – New York, NY) Four years after the release of their landmark debut in 2004, MTV VMA Award-winning, Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum Island Records group The Killers have completed their fourth album – and first new studio album in two years – DAY & AGE, featuring the new single, "Human" debuting worldwide September 22nd, while the digital single will be released September 30th. The new album hits stores November 25th – two days before Thanksgiving.

DAY & AGE was produced by Stuart Price, a key figure in electronic music (Les Rhythmes Digitales) who previously worked with The Killers on "Don't Shoot Me Santa," their 2007 Christmas single; as well as music on their 2007 compilation, Sawdust. Over the past five years, Price has worked as a producer, mixer, programmer, and keyboardist, including The Killers' "Mr Brightside" remix which was Grammy Nominated.

The Killers – Brandon Flowers on vocals and keyboards, guitarist David Keuning, bassist Mark Stoermer, and drummer Ronnie Vannucci – found time to complete their new album while also wrapping up their biggest summer rock festival season in the U.S. and abroad. Historic headlining gigs at England's prestigious Leeds and Reading fests coincided with an appearance on the cover of NME's August 8th issue. Earlier in 2008, the Killers took home top honors for Best Band of the Year and Best Track of the Year ("Tranquilize") at the annual NME Awards USA gala, at the El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles on April 23rd.

DAY & AGE comes one year after the release of Sawdust (November 2007), a 17-song collection of previously unreleased session tracks, B-sides, rarities and one-offs. The album was assembled at a recording studio in New York's Hell's Kitchen, where the Killers worked with Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer Lou Reed two recordings. Two singles and videos were issued: "Shadowplay" (from the motion picture soundtrack of Control, Anton Corbijn's biopic of Ian Curtis), and "Tranquilize".

The Killers' RIAA platinum second album Sam's Town (October 2006) debuted at #2 and spun off two hit singles: the #1 Modern Rock "When You Were Young," nominated for Grammy Awards for Best Rock Song and Best Short Form Music Video; and "Read My Mind," the band's first #1 at Triple-A. Their worldwide 5 million-selling debut Hot Fuss (June 2004) was the longest-running rock album inside the top 50 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for all of 2005, logging 94 weeks on the chart – 53 of those inside the Top 50. The album spun off four solid hit singles – the Grammy-nominated anthem, "Somebody Told Me," the VMA-winning (and Grammy-nominated) "Mr. Brightside," the Modern rock hit "Smile Like You Mean It," and the Grammy-nominated "All These Things That I've Done."
Click to expand...

I am really excited.

The_Cool_Cow · Sep 22, 2008

Come on, wheres the excitement? THE NEW SINGLE IS TOMORROW!!!!!!!! Well, im excited.

Andrea · Sep 22, 2008

The_Cool_Cow said: ↑

Come on, wheres the excitement? THE NEW SINGLE IS TOMORROW!!!!!!!! Well, im excited.
Click to expand...

Shit, you don't have to tell me twice, lol. I am super excited!

WOOOOOOOT!

The_Cool_Cow · Sep 22, 2008

I clip of "Human" was posted:

http://kroq-data.com/wah/wah/audio/default.aspx?a=715&c=0&k=

I havent listened to it yet, I want to keep the whole thing a surprise for its official release. According to the forum posters on The Killers official forum, though, it is extremely dancey, and very clean (like Hot Fuss). Im not sure what to think, I dont want too dancey. I like real instruments!

Andrea · Sep 22, 2008

Oh my God, I didn't want to click, but I did, lol. I couldn't resist any longer. It is dancey but I personally liked what I heard from that little clip. Oohhh, it's making the anticipation worse. It definitely has a "Hot Fuss" feel to it.

Man, they need to release the album and tour asap. I need to see them again.

The_Cool_Cow · Sep 22, 2008

Yeah, I caved too.

I like it. I was worried that it was going to be too dancey, but it wasnt. It has a Hot Fuss vibe, but with a Sams Town feeling as well. It should be good.

Andrea · Sep 22, 2008

Yay! I'm listening to the whole song now!! *happy*

I am in love with it, even though it sounds like a remix of some sort. Very upbeat!

Hear it here: http://perezhilton.com/category/brandon-flowers/

Download it here: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EVZ3KLH9

Dean · Sep 22, 2008

I like the music but I'm not sure if the vocals fit or not.

Chris. · Sep 22, 2008

I like it a lot actually. It's different, but you can still tell it's the Killers.

JJ · Sep 22, 2008

im pretty impressed not 100% on the vocals though

Messy Marj · Sep 22, 2008

Oh god, I have to go change my panties nao!

Andrea · Sep 22, 2008

Messy Marj said: ↑

Oh god, I have to go change my panties nao!
Click to expand...

LOL. I feel the same way.

The_Cool_Cow · Sep 23, 2008

I like it. Its growing on me, though I think that the synth's should be turned down a little bit. Still. it will probably be a hit, and it might be awesome live.

Derek · Sep 24, 2008

The song is pretty good. I definitely can hear the Viva La Vida comparison Perez Hilton said. I like it.

*EDIT* Not a fan of the lyrics on this track, as some of the lines (not all) when put in context are basically meaningless.

As for Branden's singing...he's sung better than this in the past. The track is still rather good and I'd rate it a 7.5/10 but I sincerely hope Branden ditches the strange almost nonsensical lyrics on the other tracks.

Andrea · Sep 28, 2008

Anyway, in other news, it's been announced that The Killers will be on Saturday Night Live on October 4th. Hopefully they will do "Human" justice. If not, no biggie.

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