Recent departures from the Killers’ touring lineup have led Brandon Flowers to steer the ship through personal and global storms. On the band’s first album for five years, the frontman sounds as if he is howling in the face of an oncoming hurricane of mid-career panic, cheating senators and “fake news”. Guitars rage, electronic noises shriek. The Calling and the defiantly swaggering The Man come armed with a new funk chassis. However, beneath the epic gloss, vulnerability fires their best songs in a decade. The keyboard-driven, poppy Tyson vs Douglas positions Flowers as a fading champion. Rut and the title track channel his wife’s battles with PTSD. Then, Brian Eno co-write Some Kind of Love finds the Killers at their most beautifully ethereal. Finally, Have All the Songs Been Written? (a title knowingly suggested by Bono) finds Flowers confronting self-doubt to emerge as a latter-day Roy Orbison. This is certainly big music, which is all the better for its more intimate, touching soul.
