Review Summary: Give me a song that I may sing That cuts like a canyon and rides on a wing
In my humble opinion, The Killers write their best work when they sound like they’re shooting for the moon. When the guitars are wailing and the synths are blaring and the drum beats as though the band was marching into some great beyond, the band is in their prime. This time around, there’s a change in the lineup - Dave Keuning is missing! The bands guitarist from the very start went on hiatus in ‘17 and has not a single lick of work to do with Imploding The Mirage. So what does a Killers album sound like with one less band member?
The answer is - apologies to Mr. Keuning - their very best.
Imploding the Mirage is a near perfect marriage of the Springsteen influenced heartland rock the band always worshipped, and the obvious new-wave influence that the base of the band had been built upon. In the past, albums seemed to favor one flavor over the other (Sam’s Town and Battle Born being more Springsteen influenced, while Hot Fuss and Day and Age invoked more new-wave arena rock vibes). Imploding the Mirage opts to shoot for the moon and go for both on every single track. Even though there aren’t too many wailing guitars with impressive solos (shy of Caution, a sick solo courtesy of Lindsey Buckingham!), in the year 2020, The Killers have the strongest pulse yet thanks to the work Flowers and Ronnie Vannucci poured into their newest album.
It’s in every track. It’s the synth kicking in like a wild horse on the opening track blowing you out of your chair. The ecstatic declaration of ‘throwing caution’ to the wind over lyrics that channel The Boss mixed in with Flowers’ flowery prose. To me the most prominent example is the final third of ‘Lightning Fields’, where all that repetition reaches a satisfying head after a verse from k.d. Lang. ‘Hold your hand again, speak your name again / Over heels again, tell you everything’ goes the chorus at a tempo that makes me want to stomp my feet and clap my hands. Of course it’s about Brandons father missing his deceased mother, but that doesn’t make it any less of a rollicking tune.
We also see what experimentation looks like for The Killers on groovy single Fire In Bone. The half-sung half-spoken chorus is standard fare, but the verses sound like they were lifted out of an alternate universe Talking Heads track. There are multiple big features here, a first for the band over six albums. Weyes Blood delivers an impressive bridge on ‘My God’, and joins Brandon for the chorus as well. Each guest feature definitely adds - Buckingham, lang and Weyes all take The Killers compositions and better them. If only they had someone to work with on ‘When The Dreams Run Dry’ - maybe they would forego the strange middle third and extend that sick back half to be more than just that.
Even when not ‘shooting for the moon’ the pulse is still there, obviously. On the title track finale, Flowers and co. come off as plucky, delivering a damn near cryptic chorus - "I wasn’t lost in the collage - I was imploding the mirage!" He delivers a story in verses that seems akin to biting the bullet on some object of affection. After all the larger than life deliveries found earlier in the album, it’s definitely on the ‘timid’ side of things for closing out an album. And yet that bounce is palpable! It’s in the drum fills and the keyboard playing and that delicious delivery of ‘mirage’. Yes friends, The Killers have always had a beat, a rhythm, a pulse in every dramatic, drawn out lyric and stadium ready heartland rock tune they’ve written. It just so happens that 16 years on, that pulse might be the strongest it’s ever been.
