Battle Born

You'd think with a name like The Killers their music would have a sinister edge to it, but the album Battle Born, their release from last year, is more of an emo record, for sensitive teens or soccer moms who want to think they are still hip. It's not a bad record, and at times is very touching, but it's mostly background music.

I have heard of The Killers for a while, but hadn't really heard much of their music, so I took a chance on Battle Born. The songs are mostly sweeping anthems about heartbreak, sung with weepy emotion by Brandon Flowers. But many of the songs sound the same, and none really grabbed me.

Flowers has some skill as a lyricist, and if the words are reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen in their emphasis on loneliness and wind-swept vistas, they still resonate. I particularly liked "Runaways":

"Blonde hair blowin' in the summer wind
A blue-eyed girl playing in the sand
I'd been on her trail for a little while
But that was the night that she broke down and held my hand"

And "Miss Atomic Bomb":

"You were standing with your girlfriends in the street
Falling back on forever, I wonder what you came to be…
I was new in town, the boy with the eager eyes
I never was a quitter, oblivious to schoolgirls' lies
When I look back on those neon nights
The leather seats, the passage rite
I feel the heat, I see the light"

The only song that deviates from the arena-style ballad is "From Here on Out," which has a honky-tonk style flavor to it.

So, Battle Born (the phrase comes from the Nevada state flag, as The Killers are from Las Vegas) is a decent record, but I doubt I'll be listening to it again.