Anne WidjajaVerdict: The Killers - Day and Age
November 26th 2008 13:37
After Sawdust which was in most part an album of fillers and bad country tracks, the release of album number three: Day and Age was barely expected. Island records entire marketing team being entirely dedicated to Pete Wentz and his hair certainly dropped the ball on the band that was once hailed one of the greats. Honestly though, I'm not sure how many of us really cared anymore. A band loses its greatness once the band members start to recognise their greatness and then decide to inflate their egos to emulate the greatness that everyone expects. The album is a somewhat tragic anticlimax to The Killers meteoric rise. Produced by Stuart Price who impressed the band with the Thin White Duke remix of Mr Brightside, the album is predictably more dance than it's predecessors and for the most part seriously lacks originality. Opener Losing Touch sets the 80s electro vibe the album intends to capture and that cheesy electric guitar solo in the end of the song could have been the perfect soundtrack to an air punch Hasselhoff moment on Night Rider. Unlike the predictable structure of Sam's Town, tracks such as Losing Touch and This is Your Life are at the very least interesting. Catchy riffs and Flowers' smooth vocals give light and shade to the tracks. And yes, those are trumpets on a Killers track. Surprisingly they're subtle enough to work.
First single Human is a difficult track to take seriously even if Flowers does pose the question that has plagued man for centuries (it doesn't get much deeper than) 'are we human or are we dancer?'. This song is predictable, cheap 80s dance and comes a close second to the worst track of the album - the worst being a tie between Joy Ride and I Can't Stay. Think cheap disco, bad imitation of Duran Duran. And yes, that is a saxophone bongo part. Eat your heart out Kenny G. I Can't Stay is what I hope is the last and only attempt The Killers will ever endeavor at creating a reggae-ish, Caribbean sound. In fact that's offensive to both of those genres. The rest of the album is composed of rather bland fillers. The track that still gives me hope that The Killers may one day recover from this strange dance faze, and in many ways saves this album is Spaceman. Impossibly catchy it's a fresh sound is quite on track with the upbeat tracks on Sam's Town and draws on that signature Killers perfectly infused synth keyboard riff. It also has the most varied drum rhythms on the entire album.
Verdict: This album is about as random as a bargain bin at your local cd shop. Full of hits and misses, you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hum a familiar melody, you'll say WTF? The Killers are simply trying to hard to experiment and be original, and reinventing themselves on every album has made them a band which other than having Flower's signature croon, no longer have a signature sound. No matter how hard they try recycling 80s/90s electro dance beats is simply not the path that The Killers were intended to follow. The band seriously need to check their egos in, maybe listen to what's going on in the music scene at the moment, because it certainly isn't what they're getting at. The only good thing about The Killers at the moment is that at least Brandon finally shaved that damned mustache.
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