Ted's Polish-Mexican Page

So, the critics are going off on the Killers' new album, Sam's Town. One guy with Rolling Stone said that it "leave[s] no pompous arena cliché untweaked" and another critic said that the album is "a classic case of a young band overreaching to assert its significance." To which I say, so what?

What I've heard of the album, which I haven't bought yet, seems to have much stronger songwriting than the last one does. (The phrase "I've got soul, but I ain't a soldier" seems clever the first time you hear it, but after he repeats it a dozen times it just sounds like he doesn't have any other ideas.) The complaints about "arena rock clichés" would be more palatable if printed in magazines that have not featured U2 or Mick Jagger on the cover. The funniest complaints have been about this young band doing Springsteenish songs when they are only putting out their second album. Considering Bruce Springsteen himself was pretty Springsteenish on his first album, I don't know what the problem is.


In all the comparisons, I don't know why the critics are missing the obvious one: the band dresses and sounds a little like western suited bands of the late 1980's, like Rank and File and the Unforgiven. There was sort of a mini-movement of this in the mid-1980's, which only I remember, apparently.

The most stark example of this is the name of the album, Sam's Town. A string tie and boot sporting Wall of Voodoo had an album called Seven Days in Sammy's Town, named, apparenly, after an actual place near the California-Nevada border (not far from the Killers home in Las Vegas). Wall of Voodoo, by that time, had a different lead singer (Stan Ridgway of "Mexican Radio" fame had left).


I don't see the complaints about the band. They aren't the "let's play distorted barre chords and bitch about life" thing that people are confusing with rock these days, nor are they the ultra boring self-referential slop that shoe gazers like My Chemical Romance are.

As for the relentless self promotion of lead singer Brendan Flowers, another so what. That's rock and roll. If you don't believe me, check out some early interviews with Bono. If he doesn't live up to his own self generated hype, we can make fun of him later like we do Kevin Federline.


Hasta la proxima. Do zobaczenia.