All Killer, No Filler

I’ve got a bit of a man-crush on Brandon Flowers. He’s so rugged, and he plays the keyboards. Which is a pretty rare combination.

The Killers are making a comeback this year with a new album called “Battle Born“, and today sees the official premiere of opening single Runaways (you can have a sneaky listen here on Gigwise.com – the track’s already been leaked). What I love about this band is their strong sense of place, and identity. This song, like most of their stuff, just shouts Las Vegas.

In The Lightyears we’ve been talking a lot about sense of place in relation to our new album. In my head I want it to conjure up the image of England’s rolling countryside, because that’s where we grew up. So I guess if So Solid Crew are ‘urban’, you might call us ‘rural’. Or ‘pastoral’. Pastoral piano pop. Catchy, huh?

Incidentally, while we’re talking about The Killers, I’d like to wager that we’re the only band in the world to have played ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ in South Korea and sung ‘I’m in Seoul but I’m not a soldier’. I know – it really is clever, isn’t it? Top-draw political satire, considering our extreme proximity to Kim Jong-il at the time. Read more in my 2008 Korean tour diary.