Artist: Brandon Flowers
Album: Flamingo
Out: September 14th, 2010
Have you ever been to Vegas? You know, waking up at 10am after 45 minutes of sleep, being out all night, club hoping, bar crawling, strip club bouncing. Binge drinking, being offered porn and hardcore drugs. Crazy lights. Elvis impersonators. The whole VEGAS experience. Everything that happens there, stays there, kind of a thing. Well this album is nothing like that. It's dull, dreary, slow, life-less and lacks any sort of color.
The Flamingo hotel may be an original Vegas cornerstone of a hotel, but like this album, it's needs some serious professional help.
You'd think, teaming Flowers, with his erratic energy and pension for glam rock, with Stuart Price, the man behind pop masterpieces from Kylie Minogue and Madonna, would be a marriage made in heaven. But something fell short here. Price produced over half of the album, but none of of his offerings sound anything like what he's used to doing.
I'm all for experimentation, but we're all fans for a reason. And we should always remember why the consumer buys the album in the first place.
The album opens with one of its many life-less offerings, Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas. The song itself is anything less than fabulous, and only struggles to find its heartbeat somewhere near the end of its nearly five minutes. After droning through two more songs, one of them the next single, Only The Young, the album finally finds a pulse, even if just for a song. Jilted Lovers & Broken Hearts should be one of those filler album songs for this record, but its not. It's the only song with a monochrome of life. It's strong drum beat and clever lyrics really resonate with a listener, and I could it see it possibly being the only potential single on the record.
The rest of the album slinks along like one extended boring song. Though I learned to enjoy listening to the B-side worthy of a lead single, Crossfire, by the time it shows up on the disc, I'm ready for it to be over.
Brandon stated in an interview that he wanted to make this record because the rest of The Killers wanted to take a break, so by the time he was done promoting this record, the rest of the boys would be ready to get back in the studio. My suggestion, is that he shold have booked that ticket to Hawai'i instead of making this offering.
Flowers belongs with his creative partners in The Killers. Thats where his magic lies. This is just not it.
Bottom line: Not a killer album. Stick with what you know, Brandon.
Must hear song(s): Jilted Lovers & Broken Hearts
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