The Desired Effect
Brandon Flowers
(Island)
Four stars
Sometimes, you really find out what a member brings to a band when they step away from the fold.
For former Oasis guitarist Noel Gallagher, for example, it was his knack for marrying hooks with majestic melodies that made his solo career take off and the Oasis leftover project Beady Eye tank. Julian Casablancas’s solo project revealed that he was majorly responsible for the signature lackadaisical hooks so central to The Strokes cooler-than-thou sound.
Which brings us to The Killer’s Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of a band whose four albums can be neatly divided between Spingsteen-esque stadium rock and ebullient 1980s dance sounds.
Judging by Flowers's second solo effort, The Desired Effect, it is the latter that is his key input to the band.
You get the feeling it could not have been recorded with The Killers – whose last album, Battle Born, was released three years ago – if for no other reason than the simple fact that guitarists Dave Keuning and Mark Stoemer would have practically nothing to do.
With the exception of the rousing opener, Dreams Come True, the rest of the album is out-and-out synth-pop, with keyboard lines that gleam like the neon lights of Flowers's Las Vegas home.
Can't Deny My Love, with its tumbling digital drums, begins like a lost Chris de Burgh hit, before a thrilling chorus arrives that's augmented by squalling synth lines straight from The Cars handbook.
The influences are even more apparent in I Can Change, which samples Bronski Beat's club-tastic 1980s hit Smalltown Boy, as Flowers creates a chilling landscape that's tempered with another sky-high chorus. Flowers was correct when he recently said that Battle Born was not a good-enough album, the primary reason being that for all its bravado it lacked songs with hooks you can hang on to. On that score, his bandmates will be listening to Between Me and You with envy.
It's an absolutely gorgeous ballad that Battle Born could have used – Flowers's croon has never sounded so wide-eyed and tender. His sheer vulnerability here is far removed from the usual brashness displayed with The Killers, which is definitely a good thing.
Flowers’s single-minded determination to keep the sound purely retro works against him towards the end, however.
Never Get You Right, with its digital handclaps and warm keyboards, lands on the wrong side of cheesy, while the minimal closer The Way It's Always Been seems content to remain idle, with Flowers sounding like he's had enough of the whole project.
This downbeat ending is a pity, because last few songs aside, The Desired Effect mostly achieves what it sets out to do.
[ sasaeed@thenational.ae ]
