The Killers shine with old glam and new anthems
By Joan Anderman, Globe Staff | October 27, 2006
Boston Globe

Here's a rock concert conundrum: What happens when a glammy synth-pop band trades in its skinny ties and foxy singles for scruffy beards and earnest anthems, and then has to cover both bases in a live show?

It's only been two years since the Killers burst out of Las Vegas with "Hot Fuss," a decadent rush of new wave post-punk, and just three weeks since the band released "Sam's Town," a collection that owes more to Bono and the Boss than Duran Duran. With an American Dream-themed product to push, the visuals were straight out of a western wasteland: the sound monitors were dressed to look like old wooden crates, strings of pointy little flags -- the sort you'd see at a car dealership -- cris-crossed the stage, and antique saloon drapes formed a tacky backdrop.

But singer Brandon Flowers's glittering electric keyboards were mounted on a disco ball, and it wasn't an empty nod to 2004. The differences between the two albums were all but erased during a brisk, ebullient set that drew equally from both. Good chord changes, sharp hooks, and top-of-the-line showmanship, it turns out, work wonders with or without facial hair.

Minus much of the new record's pomp-heavy production, the new songs revealed themselves to be close cousins to those itchy early hits, and Flowers sold each and every one with the grinning vigor of, well, a car salesman. Perhaps intentionally, "Somebody Told Me," the first single from "Hot Fuss," was performed back-to-back with "When You Were Young," the first single from "Sam's Town." The former song is an infectious dance tune. The latter is an infectious, arena-ready, dance tune.

And so it went with "Mr. Brightside" and "Uncle Jonny ," "Smile Like You Mean It" and "Bling (Confessions of a King)," "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" and "For Reasons Unknown" -- old and new tunes notable not for their stylistic allegiances but their fine physiques and masterful mechanics. A barely visible fifth player contributed extra layers of pealing guitar and chunky keyboards, freeing Flowers to grab his microphone and bound across the stage. He gesticulated dramatically with nearly every phrase, painting the words with his hands and leaping onto monitors to strike preacherly poses.

The new music aspires, aggressively, to sincerity, but Flowers remains a shameless entertainer. His vest and moustache are as much showpieces as the shiny artifacts of glam and new wave. What's clear, and what matters, is that it's all in the service of a song.

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