Here’s What Critics Are Saying About The Killers’ “Marvellously Absurd” New Album
Some claim it's the band's best album yet - while others call it "wearying".
Last Friday, after it was initially delayed due to COVID-19 chaos, The Killers released their sixth album, Imploding The Mirage.
Lead by bombastic singles like ‘Caution’ and ‘Fire In Bone’, it’s yet another shoot-for-the-moon collection of tracks from Brandon Flowers and company, songs that roar through the red hot desert and threaten to lift off the earth all together.
It’s the first album the band have recorded without their usual guitarist Dave Keuning, who departed the band following the release of their last album, 2017’s Wonderful Wonderful. He hasn’t been replaced as such — his parts are just being filled in by bassist Mark Stoermer, and a revolving door of musicians including former Fleetwood Mac guitarist Lindsey Buckingham (who blitzes through a solo on ‘Caution’), The War On Drugs’ Adam Granduciel, and album producer Jonathan Rado.
As with all their albums, Imploding The Mirage has been met with differing reactions — some critics have labelled it one of their biggest and best yet, while others consider it wearying. Here’s your cheatsheet to what the critics are saying.
This Is Not A Subtle Album
It’s The Killers — subtlety isn’t just off the menu, it never made it anywhere near the kitchen in the first place. Imploding The Mirage is no different, with all reviews pointing to the enormity of the songwriting and production as being cut from Bruce Springsteen’s cloth.
“They long ago reached their natural pumped-up radio rock peak, yet here sound as though they’ve been hitting the sonic steroids,” writes NME’s Mark Beaumont, gifting the album five stars. Elsewhere, he labels it “gargantuan”, the songs blown up to “canyon-rock enormity”.
The Guardian’s Kitty Empire agrees, writing that it has all the marks of your standard Killers fare. “Boosterish anthemics that rise, soar and then find another gear; the swagger of Springsteen cutting some rug at an indie disco; the Christian-adjacent uplift that singer Brandon Flowers channels much as Coldplay’s Chris Martin or U2’s Bono have before him,” Empire writes.
“Everything is cranked up to 10; every surface is planed and polished; everything booms with echo, as if you’re already listening to it in the nosebleed seats of a sports arena,” writes renowned music journalist Alexis Petridis, in his review for The Guardian.
But It Desperately Needs Some Subtlety
Being whacked over the head with a mallet may well work for one song, but The Killers constantly run into trouble when they try to extend the same trick to a full album. According to most reviewers, this is Imploding The Mirage’s problem.
“In isolation — or scattered in a setlist between the songs people have actually paid to hear — it’s all fine,” writes Petridis. “The problem comes when you take it as a whole. The lack of light and shade, the point-blank refusal to countenance subtlety, becomes wearing. It’s surge overkill.”
Comparisons to Springsteen dot every review, but as Empire writes, the band have yet to learn a key element of Springsteen’s magic: subtlety. “If bombast is not your thing, this is not your band. Imploding the Mirage says some nuanced things, but very loudly,” she writes.
Pitchfork writer Alfred Soto more or less agrees. Labelling the album a “marvellously absurd collection of synth-rock gems and arena anthems”, he writes that Flowers clearly adores Springsteen, including the “penchant for florid twaddle”.
“Flowers doesn’t write Springsteen songs, he writes concordances to Springsteen songs, set to pillowy synths and with drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr.’s beats frisky enough for audiences aware of but not infatuated with dance music — like, say, Springsteen’s,” Soto says.
There Are Some Surprising Experiments
Some surprising samples crop up across Imploding The Mirage. Empire and Petridis both note the presence of ’70s krautrock acts like Neu! and Can on the track ‘Dying Breed’, while ‘Fire In Bone’ strongly recalls the funk rock of Talking Heads.
Beaumont, meanwhile, points to the track ‘Lightning Fields’ (which features k.d lang) and claims it “is drenched in gospel ardour and the sophisti-funk feel of Peter Gabriel’s ‘So’ and Kate Bush’s ‘Hounds Of Love’.”
Ultimately, though, this is The Killers through and through.”[It’s another] dazzling statement of ultra-modern pomp, and one arguably even more in step with new generations of alt-rock,” proclaims Beaumont. “It’s a musical DeLorean: rooted in mainstream Americana but speeding into adventurous horizons.”
“No one quite sounds like them in 2020,” writes Pitchfork’s Soto. “No one will sound like them in 2031. They remain inscrutable and delirious, trying for big, cool with small.”
The Killers’ new album Imploding The Mirage is out now via Island Records Australia.
Photo Credit: Olivia Bee