Artist The KillersRecord Hot FussLabel Island Records4 out of 5 stars
If Las Vegas were a piece of reality, its property attributes could be listed on one hand: amoral forum for public intoxication, bottomless pit of money-suck and home to endangered white tigers with anger issues stemming from years of overexposure to Siegfried and Roy’s, er, private business.
A burgeoning music scene, capable of producing innovative and exciting bands, however, has never been listed among Vegas’ potential attributes.
Thankfully desert-bred, The Killers are working hard to change all that. Their debut on Island Records, Hot Fuss, is a scathingly glamorous offering from a band that has obviously spent loads of time spinning ’80s-era glam and synth pop.
Naturally, the moral vacuum inherent to any city like Vegas-founded entirely on greed, lust and corruption-has an impact on the band’s sound.
That might be why The Killers aren’t exactly like anyone else in the up-and-coming indie scene these days-they look like Stellastarr* with a little more Duran Duran, they sound like Echo and the Bunnymen fronted by Liam Gallagher of Oasis and they have a dangerous attraction to synth beats and catchy anthems that snares listeners after just a few spins.
In other words, The Killers are taking the “big attitude, bigger hair” approach of old and mixing it with a nostalgic indie-pop sensibility of late. Plus, their lyrics are vague enough to be interpreted in a number of ways, but simultaneously clever and direct enough to stick in your head like super glue (“Somebody told me that you had a boyfriend that looks like a girlfriend that I had in February of last year.”).
This is some ass-shaking to quell your fussin’, for sure.