Killers old before their time on ‘Wonderful Wonderful’
Look at rock ’n’ roll’s most enduring acts, and their careers fit a general arc of shared milestones. There’s the breakout hit record, some creative soul-searching, and perhaps a pivot from guitars to keyboards. Eventually, bands arrive at a resting-on-their-laurels phase, which may include greatest hits collections or Christmas albums, along with some aging-rocker grumbling about how their chosen genre just isn’t the same as in the good ol’ days.
Taking an arc that normally stretches over entire lifetimes, The Killers have raced through this cycle in just over a decade: breaking out with their stratospheric debut Hot Fuss in 2004, cycling through an ’80s phase and a hiatus before releasing their greatest hits album in 2013, the band’s members eventually split to embark on solo projects.
As if to further prove this, the Killers’ fifth album, Wonderful Wonderful (out Friday), their first studio release in five years, sounds like the kind of “getting the band back together” record a group of 60-year-olds makes, offering not much new except for some cheeky self-reflection, while outwardly puzzling about the state of rock ’n’ roll today.
The majority of Wonderful Wonderful consists of the arena-ready synth rock the Killers can churn out in their sleep. Brandon Flowers is as reliable a frontman as ever, delivering anthems like Rut and Life to Come — though he’s less compelling when he’s talk-singing through songs like Run for Cover and The Calling.
Then, there’s The Man, a standout track on the album, and the song many listeners likely will remember Wonderful Wonderful by in the years to come. The goofily strutting lead single is bursting with put-on bravado meant to parody the band’s glory days. Or, according to album notes Island Records shared with critics, the song is a “tongue-in-cheek look back on his younger self, the ‘Brandon Flowers’ persona from Hot Fuss, and reconciles that wide-eyed, success-dazzled character with the man he is now.”
So, who is Brandon Flowers now? It’s hard to tell from Wonderful Wonderful, an album of impressionistic storytelling that’s too blurry to connect. Yet, the interviews the band conducted around Wonderful Wonderful show members falling into cranky rock-star mode, with Flowers bemoaning the state of rock ’n’ roll today to Noisey, claiming bands aren’t breaking out like they used to because they just aren’t as talented.
“It could happen — but there hasn’t been anybody good enough,” Flowers said. “If there was a band like the Strokes, or Interpol, people would talk. If there were some kids out there right now playing (the Interpol song) Obstacle 1 tonight, I would hear about it, you would hear about it. But there isn’t.”
That’s the same world-weary band we hear on the final track, Have All The Songs Been Written?, a song that’s too forgettable not to answer its title’s question.
Of course, as listeners who’ve been paying attention can attest, there most certainly are new bands making great music. The members of the Killers aren’t aging rockers in the twilight of their careers. At 36, there’s no reason for Flowers to write off indie rock as a genre that’s been dead since the early 2000s, when the Strokes were rock gods and the Killers were still beloved by critics.
Perhaps if they started acting their age, the Killers could capture that magic they seem to have decided has escaped them.