20. Battle Born / The Killers

Brandon Flowers is your man.  The Desert Highway King.  The Trans-Am Warrior.  The Arena Rock Balladeer.  The Sad-Eyed Sage of the Vegas Strip.  Neither the cords of time nor the rust of cars can prevent him from immortalizing every magical moment, every epic makeout, that still, in hindsight, stings the best of us.

To say Battle Born is all earnest nostalgia is an understatement.  But the album is less about memories of intense loves and big dreams as it is providing the right soundtrack--the right overwhelming feeling--to frame those loves and dreams.  Served in oversized pop anthems and overwrought rock ballads, it just may be The Killers best album since their loaded debut.  It is essentially hair metal for dudes who prefer pop over thrash, keyboards over six-strings.

Though Battle Born does not have the same tantalizing glow of singles lit up by Hot Fuss, or even that one transcendant moment like Sam's Town (see "When You Were Young"), the record possesses a consistent collection of songs that can carry listeners to the mountaintop by the strength of Flowers' undiminished belief.  If he can sing it, you can believe it.

Not too long ago, Flowers mused that his band could be as big as U2.  While this will never happen, it is not for a lack of trying.  These songs reach for a populist connection that would make the Boss blush, but not with contrived working-man tropes.  Here, Flowers talks about fast cars, tan girlfriends, and fighting against the march of time that will prevent us from realizing our neon-light dreams.  Sure, Flowers can be redundant as a lyricist (see his penchant for couplets like "eager eyes," "neon nights," "golden nights," and every other kind of nights), but his ability to tap into the exaggerated essence of our attachment to youth and its exhilaration, his reaching for the big universal moment in a song, is uniquely suited to his rock-vocal prowess.

Two passages sum up the album best.  The first is from "The Way It Was."  "I remember driving in my daddy's car to the airfield / Blanket on the hood, backs against the windshield / Back then this thing was running on momentum, love, and trust / That paradise is buried in dust."  That description just might be the fate of our golden past, but it will not stop Flowers from looking back at the brilliant flash.  On "Miss Atomic Bomb," he resolutely sings, "Making out, we've got the radio on / You're going to miss me when I'm gone."  And we don't doubt it for a second.