The Killers - Battle Born

Of the very few remnants that I have from Shaun's music taste circa 2005, the Killers were, up until now, the most unwavering and unlikely to falter. I was even patient with the, in retrospect, shaky Day + Age (it did, in fairness, boast some beautiful songs [A Dustland Fairytale] and some daring, hella catchy risks [Joy Ride; Neon Tiger]) and there were still those staple "anthems" in the shape of Spaceman and Human. After the most drawn out and tiresome of media-driven hiatuses - not to mention a couple of iffy side projects and solo albums - the Killers return with their fourth (proper, ignoring Sawdust) album and are faced with the difficulty of getting back in their stride.

Because at their most confident of stride, the Killers are fantastic. I don't care about the negative reviews for Sam's Town - actually that's a lie, I'm still fucking appalled by them - it was a brilliant album. The much more warmly-received Hot Fuss of course boasted hit after hit, and established them as the noughties mainstream rock gods they richly deserved. There were huge concerns though, given the horrible mediocrity of Flowers' Flamingo and the still-missing oomph factor in Runaways, that it's all disintegrated.

Battle Born opens with the decidedly baroque-sounding 'Flesh and Bone', more reminiscent of a Gaga instrumental than their traditional Springsteen/Roxy Music mélange. The riffs and synths are all valiant in their attempts to kick thing off triumphantly, but lack a real driving force for the first few listens (but there's something quite amiable after those awkward starts). Lyrically, though, the band are improving on their typical fairytale melodramatic nonsense, ending with the rather mythical "the bells are sobbing in this monster land/ we are the descendants of giant men". First single 'Runaways' starts off cutely with little piano segues between measures, but as mentioned, doesn't really scream "comeback" in the same sense that When You Were Young or Human did. A huge amount of promise rides on that "We can't WAAAAAIT" note, but the chorus that follows seems stylistic and directionless. It's fun, though, and quite commanding. Brandon Flowers seems a little tame on the potential soarer 'The Way it Was', but insteads comes across as fairly generic.

Their fondness for an overblown 80s power ballad makes itself heard on 'Here With Me', where Flowers finally starts trying and Dave Keuning has a little fun, but the whole thing just sounds a bit daft and unrelatable (which may, in part, be due to the cowriting credit from Travis frontman and eternal bore Fran Healy). I'm not sure if it's just me but there's a HIM or Nine Inch Nails influence about 'A Matter of Time' that really took me by surprise and to this day it remains my stand-out favourite of the album. Background chants and an industrial guitar/bass combo that eventually caves in on itself for the most majestic of Killers-explosive anthems. The manner with which they follow it - the rather Running Up That Hill-sounding 'Deadlines and Commitments' - is one of the album's biggest problems in my eyes: it's so stylistically different, and by comparison inferior, that it just drains all the energy from their momentum. Thus they return to U2 imitation on 'Miss Atomic Bomb', crooning "I was new in town; the boy with eager eyes. I never was a quitter; oblivious to schoolgirls' lies" in amongst other attempts of American iconoclasm that's not exactly rare in a Killers song. The instrumental feels a little like a mashup of 'Flesh and Bone' and 'Human' though.

I don't wish to ruin it for anyone else but the only way I can explain my disdain for 'The Rising Tide' is Flowers' resemblance to Keane vocalist Tom Chaplin during the chorus. Shudder-inducing. They reign it in a bit on 'Heart of a Girl', a track that reinstates their whole Enter/Exitlude sing-along aspect over a much quieter, calmer instrumental. The band then go a little bit country with the chipper 'From Here on Out', where Flowers resolves never to trust someone again: "you had us all fooled with your quarterback smile"... it's just an overall oddity of a track, to be honest. If the rest of the album was a precursory U2/Springsteen epicfest, 'Be Still' is their Sting moment, giving their eighties soundtrack a poignant, reflective moment. "Don't break character, you've got a lot of heart", Flowers implores with one of his sweetest vocal performances, and the end result is an extremely endearing song. The self-titled closer reinjects their showmanship, though, and there is a brief glimpse of the Hot Fuss freshness about the intro. As the track progresses, various solos and choirs are thrown in for aplomb but it never quite thrills.

Don't give me that "it'll grow on you, you just have to listen to it 10 times!" crap: the likes of Somebody Told Me and Bones were instantaneous wows. Nothing on Battle Born even comes close to that factor, and the sheer opulence of the record and all of its sugary-romantic eighties revivalism just feels horribly dated. Nothing here is particularly awful (aside from that brief Keane likening) but it just seems to me like a horrible step down for the band and makes me worry for their future. On a sidenote: 'Carry Me Home' on the deluxe edition would've been a far more sensible inclusion on the standard, in place of 'the Rising Tide'.

Rating: 6/10
Highlights: A Matter of Time, Be Still, Flesh and Bone, Runaways
Avoid: The Rising Tide, Deadlines and Commitments

Artwork Watch: About the most alluring thing about this record.
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