For the Record

The Killer’s new album Battle Born features an interesting mix of sounds that the band has experimented with over the years.

Some of the tracks have an art-rock feel whereas others are more pop-oriented. Overall, though, the album feels like a tired rehashing of old clichés, as it lacks a stand-out single.

I would not consider myself a Killers fan, but I did like their first two albums, Hot Fuss  and Sam’s Town, when I was young.

The tracks that worked for me on those albums were driven by captivating guitar riffs and catchy choruses.

Even more so than the music itself, I felt that the older work put out by the Killers felt more honest the songs and lyrics were something that came from their heart.

And let’s face it — at the risk of sounding like a hipster — huge critical and financial success have really brought down the overall quality of the Killers music as the years have gone by.

Unfortunately, over time the band has shifted their focus away from guitar-driven songs and established a more synth-oriented and electronic sound, perhaps reflecting a more general shift over the last several years in pop music.

In the process of developing a less guitar-oriented sound, the band also seems to have thrown away the ability to carefully and tastefully incorporate electronic timbres into their works.

Many tracks on Battle Born have fills and transitions that seem out of place in relation to the rest of the song, and the album itself is also full of cheesy synth lines and flat guitar parts.

For instance, “The Rising Tide,” a song with a lot of potential, feels watered down because the guitar takes a backseat to a generic  80s ostinato on the synthesizer that may or may not be from GarageBand.

The most redeeming feature of the song is the crunchy guitar solo that shines through the fluff in the middle of the song but disappears as quickly as it comes.

I’m not sure if I would say the band has run out of creative ideas, but most of the songs just feel forced.

“Be Still,” a song toward the end of the album, has a weird electronic drum backing and even stranger lyrics:

“Don’t break character/ you have a lot of heart/ is this real or is this a dream/ be still, be still.”

There’s a message in the song of hanging on in tough times that made me uncomfortable; there might be a place for this heart-to-heart message somewhere in pop music, but with lyrics like “Rise up like the sun and labor ’till the work is done,” it’s hard to take the band seriously unless you’re a time-traveling puritan.

Another song, “Carry Me Home,” perhaps best demonstrates the band’s morewishy-washy sound on this album. The Killers have never been edgy by any means, but the band fails a perfectly good motive in this song by not fully committing to a minor key. In the verse, they introduce a nice riff with a minor tinge that makes you think the song is going to be dark.

I was excited because this seemed like the first actual risk the band was going to take in an otherwise very conventional album. Instead the band keeps the song largely in a major key, eschewing what could have been a more complex sound for a basic pop cliché.

I know that looking for emotional complexity in a song from the Killers would make me an idiot, but is it wrong to expect that a band develop promising material?

In past albums like Hot Fuss and Sam’s Town, we see more of a meshing of ideas and the songs just seem to be better written.“Mr. Brightside” and “When You Were Young,” for example, were both fully realized songs whose elements worked together as a whole. The main guitar riff in “Mr. Brightside” is one of the more memorable riffs of the last decade in pop music, and “When You Were Young” also incorporated itself into the public conscience of popular music.

Tracks on the new album, however, lack the direction and determination of these earlier songs. What makes nearly all songs off the Killers new album ho-hum? Many factors play a role, but the mostly likely explanation is a deviation from the formulas that worked in the past.