The Killers
Day & Age
Island Records
When their last album, Sam’s Town, was released in 2006, The Killers’ Brandon Flowers declared that it would be “one of the best albums of the past 20 years.” Despite falling short of that goal, they have taken a few steps closer with Day & Age.
The Killers have effectively taken what made Hot Fuss catchy and Sam’s Town unique, mixed them with old-school grandeur, grooving world music rhythms and presented it with their natural Vegas-style showmanship.
Dabbling in everything from Jamaican vacation (“I Can’t Stay”) to galactic voyage (“Spaceman”), The Killers use their latest release to expand their repertoire and push their soaring anthems in new directions. “Spaceman” follows an abducted earthling, traveling through space with his alien captors, who is dismayed when they bust out the obligatory anal probe. Not exactly what you would expect from the same band that produced the Morrissey-channeling “Mr. Brightside.” While their past releases have sounded too friendly or at least come across as being too ambitious, Day & Age shows that The Killers are starting to find their ground as the arena superstars they desperately want to be. -CS

Guns N’ Roses
Chinese Democracy
Geffen Records
To paraphrase Chuck Klosterman, who put it best, “Reviewing Chinese Democracy is like trying to review a unicorn. Should I compare it to a conventional horse or should I be primarily blown away that it exists at all?”
The very fact that I was able to walk inside a store, pick up a copy and actually listen to it from beginning to end is a wonder in and of itself. This is an album that has been in the works for 17 years and has more musicians credited than the cast and crew of a feature film, and you know what? It’s not half bad. Sure, there are a few missteps, where Axl (the only remaining original member) tries to incorporate one part from every Guns song ever written, but there are a few tracks (“Chinese Democracy”) that remind me of how good they were in their prime. Unfortunately, there’s no Slash, so while the guitar leads are good, you can’t help but think how much better they could have been. And there’s no Duff McKagan, so there’s no one to rein in the songs and save them from becoming sprawling epics (“Madagascar”). Still, I’ll take a mediocre Guns N’ Roses album over nothing8212;as long as it means no more Chinese Democracy jokes. -TH

Kanye West
808s & Heartbreak
Roc-A-Fella Records
He might have one of the biggest egos in the music industry, but Kanye West is truly the genius he claims to be. In lieu of rapping, West (with the aid of auto-tune) sings the pain of lost love during the course of the album’s 12 magnificent, dark and brooding tracks. In “Welcome to Heartbreak,” he looks back on his life and the choices he’s made, wondering if there could have been an alternative (“My friend shows me pictures of his kids/ And all I could show him was pictures of my cribs”). The colder tunes lamenting lost love (“Tell Everybody That You Know”) are powerful enough to leave the listener breathless. I have never liked auto-tune, Lil Wayne or emo-ish sentiments, but somehow Kanye effortlessly pulls it off on one of the most spine-tingling, and best, albums of 2008. -CS