Brandon Flowers (2026)

One Liner: The Killers
Wikipedia Genre: alternative rock, new wave, heartland rock, synth-pop
Home: Vegas

Poster Position: Top Quarter - Line 4
Day: ???
Weekend One Only.

[location].

Thoughts:  I know I have written about this before, not sure if it was because of Eddie Vedder, or Marcus Mumford, or Jim James, or The Revivalists guy, but I just generally don't care for a lead singer doing a solo thing.  Especially if it was a band that I really like.  The Killers are really just Brandon Flowers.  And yes, there are other members (I couldn't tell you any of their names), but for all I know they are also playing the backing music on these tunes.  I can see if the band breaks up, and David Byrne keeps making music because the Talking Heads are dead.  But where the original band is still out there and sounds just like what you are doing on your solo thing, what are we doing?

Anyway, he was last here by himself in 2015, but he has been here with the Killers 73 times since then.  His solo stuff is disappointingly bland pop rock.  Truly a bummer to me.  The Killers' Hot Fuss was a freaking great album, coming out of left field with retro-80's pop synth-rock flourishes and really fun songs.  A lot of people crapped on their next album, Sam's Town, but I thought it was pretty good too, even if not as good as the debut.  So, I'd love to imagine that his solo stuff would be like the classic Killers.

Well, this ain't Hot Fuss.  Two albums - 2010's Flamingo and 2015's The Desired Effect.  Glad ACL was able to snag him when I'm sure the fervor to have someone here who hasn't published music in over a decade was probably fierce.  Here is the most popular tune overall on Spotify, which is from that 2010 album, called "Crossfire."  83.3 million streams.

I mean, not terrible, its just super generic sounding soft rock.  The album opener, "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" is a sweeping love-song-to / warning-about Las Vegas.  "Didn't nobody tell you, the house will always win!"  Not an especially good album.  I also listened to the top ten most popular tunes on Spotify a few times, and honestly, the best are the live covers.  But still not nearly as good as the original Killers tunes.  Here is the first single from the "new" album, "Lonely Town."  18.6 million.

Oh man.  Auto Tune in the house?  Check.  Backup choir?  Yup.  Synth blips to hope that people remember the Killers?  Of course.  Honestly, not a terrible song, but also not something that I'll ever need to hear again.  I have to say the second disc is better than that older album.  It still isn't something I'd ever buy, or probably even listen to again, but it has some okay songs on there.  "Can't Deny My Love" is actually pretty snappy.  But some of these other songs are soft rock schmaltz.  Maybe I'd go see him, but I doubt it.