The Dog's Bollocks
Well The Killers are back with a killer of an album, and what a wonderful departure from their debut album 'Hot Fuss', 'Sam's Town' shows this band have balls and are not afraid to experiment and move on. This album will certainly not suffer from the "second album syndrome"; this will blast the Killers into the stratosphere. This is an album of pure indie rock, this is the sort of the album Keane could only dream about recording.
While the first album was full of musical inspirations from the likes of Pulp, The Smiths and New Order, there is a change of musical direction and flavour with 'Sam's Town'. This album seems to be influenced by the likes of U2 and Bruce Springfield and they worked with Flood on the album who probably brought some U2 touches to the mixing desk.
Opening with the title track 'Sam's Town' this shows a very apparent commercial viabilty, while at the same time showing how the band have grown and learnt from the scene around them, and taken things on board. Tracks such as 'When We Were Young', the foot tapping 'For Reasons Unknown' and 'Bones', these will be indie classics for years to come.
This album shows that The Killers have come along way from playing the gay clubs in Las Vegas and probably played 'Sam's Town' which is an actual casino! Going back stateside and recording this album has certainly helped the music. It would have been easy to stick to a tried and tested sound like Oasis do, which shows a lack of musical bollocks, and I say that as a proud Mancunian.
This is one of the hottest albums of the year and should be in any decent record collection. This shows bands like Keane and Oasis how to continue to be good and still evolve a musical style of your own. The Killers on this showing have the musical balls to be a round for a long while yet. The album is the dog's bollocks!