Rock Euphoria

The Killers’ latest disc, Day and Age seems to follow in its predecessor Sam’s Town’s footsteps as a loosely strung together concept album. While the premise isn’t nearly as clear cut as that on Sam’s Town, Brandon Flowers and company’s newest seems to zero in on the human condition from a lofty spot with an omniscient sort of high-powered telescope. Whereas Sam’s Town trained its focus on small town life, Day and Age takes a look at a much larger picture.

Much more mellow than their prior albums, Day and Age is no less grand in its sonic staging. The Killers’ trademark pomp and circumstance is ever-present, but in a much more quiet way than on previous albums. The band takes some risks this time around, incorporating different sounds from around the world into their repertoire. While the experimentation is interesting, a lot of these songs come off as some of the weaker efforts on the album. Even at their most experimental, they still sound like The Killers, just in a diluted form. Not that it’s bad, it’s just different. “I Can’t Stay” has a very lounge-vibe to it, while “Joy Ride” replicates ’70s disco with saxophone rides inserted into the churning funk-flavored hooks.

Thematically, survival stories permeate Day and Age. The disc’s crashing opener, “Losing Touch” tells a tale of corruption, fear and redemption. Flowers’ emotionally intense vocals and delivery fully drives the heart of these stories home. It’s the ornate, yet down-to-earth lyrical style of Flowers’ lyrics and vocals that is just as integral a part of The Killers signature sound as Dave Keuning’s warm, clean tone.

While musically, the experimental nature of Day & Age makes it slightly uneven, the album’s ace in the hole is its lyrics. Written about his parents, the poignant “A Dustland Fairy Tale” is exemplary of Flowers’ lyrical skill. Full of fleeting glimpses of vivid imagery, it’s easily one of the standout tracks on Day and Age, building from a whisper into a tour de force modern-day fable of intermingled cynicism and hope.

Further underlining Flowers’ skill as a lyricist, “This Is Your Life” may be a subtle allusion to Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” dropping the names of characters like “Candy” and “Jackie” (which also appear in Reed’s classic) into a sordid tale of a search for self-identity in the midst of a undesirable situation. Musically, the track features The Killers at their experimental best, meshing a neo-”Lion Sleeps Tonight” chant with a repeating harpsichord riff against a steady backdrop of a pounding rhythm section provided by bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci.

Back-to-back tracks “Human” and “Spaceman” give off a Bowie-esque Space Odyssey vibe. The disc’s lead single,”Human”, runs rampant with The Killers’ stock-in-trade pulsing synth — Retro, but not quite, ’80s dance meshed with 21st century emo rock. The dance-feel of the track goes surprisingly well with its lyrical ponderings on life and death — be it a walk into the light, a treatise on rebirth, or just contemplating life itself in a one-sided conversation with a higher power. The end result comes across as with the awesome, life-affirming power of a pot smoker with a poet’s heart who just discovered the wonder of glow-sticks a rave. It’s trippy, fun, yet refreshingly deep.

While prior albums in The Killers catalog initially reach out and grab you, many of the tracks on Day and Age take a while to grow on you. Once they do, however, they plant themselves in your brain with a number of little touches that are finally detected after multiple spins.