Brandon Flowers
The Desired Effect
(Virgin EMI)
A second solo album from The Killers' frontman should provide a break from the Springsteen rip-off accusations that are continually flung at his band. So here we go with Dreams Come True, opening track on The Desired Effect: meaty brass section, pounding drums, "the highway was teasing me with promises and visions of a country unseen/in a black limousine". Ah, ok. This could be the parody of a Springsteen pastiche.
With this out of the way, Flowers scouts around elsewhere. The Killers' last album, Battle Born, threw its arms around 1980s soft-rock ballads, and Flowers remains stuck in the same decade. Can't Deny My Love has the slippery bass and yuppie rock guitar sounds that Haim have forged a career from, while the thick bubbly synths of Lonely Town make an uneasy bed for the gospel choir effect that's applied to the song's stalker lyrics.
And then there's I Can Change, which lifts drums, keyboards and Jimmy Somerville cry directly from Bronski Beat's Smalltown Boy. It's less a "sample", more someone singing over the original's instrumental B-side.
Flowers, always the Las Vegas boy, puts the pomp of a performance between him and the listeners before being rescued by his songs' big, catchy choruses. But even if he shifts his style, he always looks backwards, never forwards.
Alan Morrison
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