If only the Killers could be as big and important as they seem to think they are. The band, who rode the coattails of the new wave revival of the mid 2000’s to fortune and fame, now seem to feel like they are somehow spokesmen for someone. Their first album, Hot Fuss, was all pop hooks and dance rhythms that had some good songs, and it gave them enough recognition to inflate their egos to the point where they felt like they could flex their “Springsteen” muscle in the form of their sophomore album Sam’s Town. As a huge fan of the Boss, nothing pains me more than seeing these one hit wonder bands saying that their records sound like Bruce Springsteen. The band had found a formula on Hot Fuss, while being redundant and opportunistic, at least did not sound like totally contrived bullshit. Unfortunately for all of the Killers fans out there, their third album still finds them reaching for a muse that simply is in another talent bracket than this sub par band.

One of the first songs on the CD, the Hot Fuss sounding “Human”, is a buzzing new wave song that is driven off of the road by Flower’s ridiculous lyrics. At one point he asks, “Are we human, or are we dancers?” This question came as a surprise to me, as I was under the impression that people could be both humans and dancers. The fact that he claims to take the general theme of the song from a Hunter S. Thompson quote only serves to infuriate me even more. If I was certain the band was putting us on with their overblown instrumentation and wildly absurd lyrics, I think I could forgive them for many of their sins, but that is hard to do. Like fellow over-popular underachiever Axl Rose, the band offers no hints that their over the top melodramatics are anything but sincere artists attempts at creating some sort of universe shifting musical composition. “The World That We Live In” is a song that sounds like it should be used in a sappy, heart warming TV commercial instead of being on a rock and roll album. “This Is Your Life” and “Joy Ride” both have bass lines straight out of the Strokes playbook and see the band trying their hand at the newest trend, which involves adding world influences to their songs. These two songs, with less bombast as some of the others, ended up being two of the strongest tracks on the album. “Neon Tiger” shows them playing up their Bowie fascination, and it is one of the songs that sounds like they are going for epic, but end up with mundane. “Spaceman” gets special mention for being about Flowers getting abducted by aliens, and yes, they are still trying to sound like an ultra serious rock and roll band, and no, they do not succeed.

The problem that comes with The Killers on their last two discs is that there seems to be a major disconnect between what they are aiming for and what they are producing. By all of their words and actions, they have every intention of being a legitimate and serious rock and roll band, yet they keep putting out cheap imitations of their heroes that do nothing but make them look silly. This album has multiple laugh-out loud moments and so many thinly veiled attempts at different musical styles that they clearly do not understand or have the talent to replicate. It seems like the more they try to become important artists, the more ridiculous they sound. Here is to hoping that Flowers and the gang can drop some of the pretensions from the last two albums in the future and go back to doing what they do best, which is making radio friendly, guilty pleasure pop songs.

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Also: (The Killers on Jimmy Kimmel Live) (The Killers on SNL) (The Killers on SNL 2)