The title of The Killers’ latest album is taken from the name of the band’s Nevada studio and the phrase emblazoned on the same state’s flag; but ironically, Battle Born doesn’t sound much like a band looking to pick a fight, but instead of victors utterly content with their hard-worn arena rock mantle.
After a four year hiatus, that included the stumble and fall of Brandon Flowers’ bloated solo album, they should have something to prove, but the Las Vegan quartet instead wear their broad clichés with pride, reminding themselves and their audience who they are in the simplest terms possible.
Take any one of the 12 wilfully grand anthems here, the rousing ‘Flesh And Bone’, charging ‘Runaways’ or brooding ‘A Matter Of Time’ – each is designed with ruthless accessibility, and they’ve never sounded so content in delivering their yearning tales of white-knuckled vagabonds and hard-luck romantics.
It’s basically Sam’s Town: Part 2. An update of the hybrid template of Born To Run and The Joshua Tree that bridged the seemingly incompatible synth-dappled 80s glamour with the blue-collar rock of Springsteen Americana.
With the canyon-sized reverb on Flowers’ voice, to the broad dramatic liturgy he’s so fond of – these are songs that soar on big melodies and bigger polish, courtesy of five mega-producers.
Where previously The Killers flirted with their retro-fetishism, here they wholeheartedly succumb to it. Nowhere more so than the overwrought ‘Here With Me’, their most unashamed attempt to write a tear-jerking power ballad. It’s their ‘November Rain’, their ‘Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing’ – a karaoke number waiting for a film to score.
It’s a record that treats cliché not as a sin, but a virtue, worn like a gleaming badge of honour. But what else would you expect of an album whose cover artwork depicts a white stallion and a dodge convertible playing chicken on a desert highway?
