Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Record of the Month

I figured I'd do a monthly 'what I'm listening to' kind of thing. This could be viewed as a lame placeholder kind of post. And probably it is. But it's my blog! So there! 


I feel a little better that the Killers new disk, Battle Born, has somewhat returned to form of their better material.

See, I like the Killers' first two disks a lot, but their third, Day & Age only had a handful of decent songs as did Brandon Flowers' solo disk. I had higher hopes for Battle Born and they weren't completely shot to hell.

Radio like when their debut came out is not the same, they're not garnering the radio airplay they once had, so the chances of attracting new listeners seem to be slimmer.

The band uses a half-dozen producers to take on the disk and that doesn't quite work for them. I have always admired Steve Lillywhite and Daniel Lanois's work, but too much of that anymore is synonymous with U2 and Brendan O'Brien with the later Springsteen stuff - both of which the Killers have emulated -  and well, Stuart Price didn't quite pull off a coup with the Killers' Day & Age.  There is something to be said about mixing it up, but something to be said for continuity. There might be too many chiefs here.

Still, Battle Born is pretty good if pretty standard. Good tracks include "Flesh and Bone", "Miss Atomic Bomb",  the title track, and "the Rising Tide".

"From Here on Out" is like an outtake from Flowers' solo disk. Not as bad as some of that stuff, but not great band material. ...and like most 'deluxe' versions of any album, there is too much filler and it dilutes the core album.

Still Battle Born is a decent of enough disk. Look at it this way - there are more than a few decent songs to lift or Spin to.  ....and sometimes, that's enough.

1 comment:

Morty said...

I had no idea, and found it quite interesting, that they are Mormons - Colbert had them on his show last week.