The Killers

As one of the biggest bands in the world puts the finishing touches on album number three Real Groove ponders the cost of being at the top with Brandon Flowers.

If Brandon Flowers isn't guarded, then he's at least being a little bit weary. Arranging himself on a nondescript designer sofa in a roomy hotel suite, he appears coiled, ready for flight, ready for anything but than to answer another run of inquisitions about forthcoming album Day & Age. It is his last interview of three days solid questioning by international press so we can forgive The Killers front man for a certain reticence.

As we begin to chat I sense it is not even that Flowers is sick of the press time, but rather cautious about how much of himself to give away, of how he's going to come across, knowing that major publications all over the world will be adopting a line on him and his band regardless of the music they're about to release.

The album is an important one for The Killers. Sam's Town divided fans and critics alike, with some lambasting the group for seemingly forgetting their synthethised roots. All of a sudden The Killers were caught in the conundrum of their public wanting more of the same but different from them. Flowers himself has stated that despite the sophomore album typically hailed as the hardest for a band, they're in a position where they have to be good all of the time. He is however adamant that even though Stuart Price is at the helm for the album it is not to sate the Hot Fuss fans.

“My instrument is kind of the keyboards, I can conjure them up but he (Price) can get better sounds than I could ever do. Even though we've used keyboards before the quality was never anything like Depeche Mode or anything, whereas Stuart knows that stuff. But no we weren't trying to get back any fans from Hot Fuss. I think if anything we just gained a lot of rock fans with Sam's Town so maybe we'll lose them. I don't know, we're just trying to do what we want to do.”

The process of completing the new album with Price is one that is still in progress at the time of our interview. The band were swapping music files back and forth with Price for several months, before finally getting into the studio together and cutting the sounds they created disparately. Listening to a good handful of the tracks from the album before the interview I learn that the only thing that is stopping completion is that Brandon hasn't yet written lyrics for all of the songs.

“Yeah I'm slow with lyrics so it always ends up coming down to the wire,” he offers by way of explanation. “It's always been like that, but next time round I'm going to try and be more concise and when I get an idea I'll just follow it. Sometimes I'll start doing a song and get this one line that I'm really happy with and because I've got this line, this idea, I get really high from that feeling and I don't follow it through. So months later it's this excruciating process of knowing that I had this idea a long time ago but now having to make something of it.”

The lyrics he pens usually involve a protagonist, inhabiting a narrative style not often used in pop music these days. Perhaps this can be attributed to Flowers being a self-confessed voyeur, watching people at restaurants, eavesdropping to pick up on threads of discussion, trying to figure out what makes them who they are. Often you can read influences of his Mormon faith into the lines he sings. Redemption, faith and hope seem to be recurrent themes for the band, but they are not so obvious as to come over in a preachy manner. More recently, for a new track, Tranquilize included on the Sawdust teaser album, filled with mostly b-sides and covers, Flowers got a little song writing coaching from the grizzled old queen of New York underground rock, Lou Reed.

“We were a little bit scared of him from the start because we knew of his reputation,” relates Brandon. “He came in and he knew who we were but it was scary. Within five minutes he was telling me which lyrics I should change and why but I learned a lot from him. At least I learned about his brain.

“One of his things was that he said you should never repeat verses because you could be saying something entirely new and it's lazy. So I think about that now whenever I want to repeat something. And also a rock band should never say 'la la la'. The song used to say 'I still hear the children play, lalala lalala la la la' so there was no way in hell that he was going to sing on the song with that. So I had to go change it to 'kick the can, kick the can, skip and

blackjack' and all this other stuff, things that I thought children would do. It was much more interesting with that in there so he helped us. I was really put on the spot though because he needed something to sing and he told me in front of everyone, “you're in a rock band, there shouldn't be any la la la.” So I was kind of being a dick and said back to him “well what did you play when you were a kid?” and he said “rock.” That was it, he put me right in my place. There's no better answer than that.”

From working with legends to living through their own folklore, it would seem that no-one is more aware of how much the world is going to be watching the release of Day & Age more than Flowers. It has been just four years since The Killers released Hot Fuss and they've been riding high on a wave of exponential popularity ever since. Part of that success is due to delivering to the fans more of what they want without having them wait too long for it. Cue Sawdust, the filler album that would tide fans over until their third studio album. It did the trick of stopping the gap for a short time, but now it's time for Flowers and co to meet their future. Flowers may be collected in conducting any number of interviews with the press but when talk turns to the pressures of being a band as big as their fans want them to be, he remarks that he's unsure of what that can be.

“I'm impressed with the quality of what we've done,” states the singer. “I mean everything could always be better but that's a pressure unto itself. I mean how do you know if you're getting better? You just hope that it's a natural progression. But you know there's that element of it almost being like religion sometimes when you go to a concert and you want all of that transcendence and everything to happen. You want that band to be like saviours for you.”

Do The Killers feel like they provide that experience for their fans?

“We have our moments playing live but we also have our fun moments. It's always glamourised that people have their voices of a generation but I don't know if we have one or not.” Guessing at what I'm about to ask, Flowers quickly adds with a self-deprecating finality, “I haven't got the balls to step into that role and I don't know if I have the brain to do it either.”

I point out that Bono decided to do that somewhere along the line, which provokes Flowers for a moment to let his guard down and state with a grin that “yeah I love U2, but you know at the same time I love Hall & Oates as well. I feel we balance that out in a good way where there is an element of uplift in our songs but we can't take it too seriously all the time.”

Part of that letting go and enjoying their position sees The Killers unafraid to try out new things on Day & Age. Listen to any Killers song and you can almost hear it reverberating around a packed arena, washing over the crowd. That arena quality is still unabashedly there, but present also is the sound of four guys pushing themselves to cover more ground. Flowers tells me there is saxophone on the new record, steel drums, Cuban percussion. They have in fact freed themselves from trying to be cool (his words).

“We've got a real disco number on there called Joyride and it's got soul all over it,” enthuses Flowers. “It's like Young Americans by Bowie but done by Prince. There's our seven minute long epic which is kind of our Disintegration. We're really giving them (The Cure) a run for their money on this one. So it's really well rounded.”

Also present will be the already accounted for first single Human and the road tested songs Spaceman and Neon Tiger. The band understandably will be calling in producer Stuart Price for some remix duties as well and Brandon mentions at the same time that they'd like to get Australian production duo Pnau to remix one of the tracks too.

Inevitably talk turns to Flowers nationality and the impending fate of a nation hinged on a day of decision. I wonder aloud if either party contacted the band for campaign endorsement, to lend their cool vote to their cause.

“You know for me personally my life is not going to change at all whether it's McCain or Obama who gets in,” says Flowers plainly. “But for some people it's going to have a big effect if that means bringing people home from the war, especially if you're a soldier. I mean everyone's hoping that Obama is going to make it but it's scary because you don't know what's going to happen. Nobody ever thought Bush was going to get a second term. But Obama was in Vegas not too long ago and there was talk of him coming to our studio. But then when I realised it wasn't going to happen I was like “we're called the fucking Killers.” He's not going to come here and have that end up in the papers. So no, there have been no calls for endorsements from The Killers,” he laughs.

Poised at the beginning of what will be a year and a half of solid touring I ask Brandon what the hardest thing is about heading away for so long. He tells me that as he now has a family it is not being there seeing his wife and son, that his priorities have completely changed from “just thinking about dumb stuff like cars to worrying about my boy”. He will have his family join him as much as possible on the road, something that for most other bands would be out of bounds. But then with Flowers being a Mormon there's hardly the chance of rock 'n' roll excess claiming a victim in him. Mentioning this to Flowers though, he seems even more hesitant to share what he really feels.

“No, no probably not. The prospect is exciting though sometimes you know. It's always around so...” It almost as if he thinks over temptation in his head before replying “but I think I'm probably better off without it.”

This sort of response from a devoted man of a tee-totalling faith intrigues me so I ask if because he's on a pedestal that people expect that if he's said something it's forever and there's no room for a change of mind.

“Yeah,” he offers, clearly not wanting to delve into the secret thoughts and trials of Brandon Flowers much further.

Perhaps then people detract a certain human element from their rock stars, to fashion them into the gods they want them to be?

“I think so yeah, but I think it's more exciting that way. I mean I did the same thing with people like Morrissey and Bernard Sumner. They were untouchable. Then I met Bernard.”

So did that shatter his illusion?

“No, I mean you've got to come to the reality that he's just a man. He's cool.”

As I say goodbye to Brandon, I realise that perhaps part of his guarded nature is to preserve the myth of the rock star, to keep part of the allure mysterious, unknown. I'm ultimately left with his impression of Bernard Sumner: he's just a man. But he's cool.