Noise: How good is The Killers’ new album?

The Killers’ (from left) Mark Stoermer, Brandon Flowers and Ronnie Vannucci (Olivia Bee/Courtesy)

NOISE

ON IMPLODING THE MIRAGE, THE KILLERS ARE EXACTLY WHAT A BELEAGUERED LAS VEGAS NEEDS THEM TO BE

BY GEOFF CARTER

art of being a Las Vegan of P a certain age (and a certain scene) is describing your relationship to The Killers. In brief: I met the band’s future drummer Ronnie Vannucci in the mid-1990s, while he was playing with sunny ska band Attaboy Skip. In April 2004, two years after I’d moved to Seattle, I saw the recently formed Killers perform onstage at that city’s Crocodile Cafe. They played a tight, nervy, eight-song set that included “Mr. Brightside,” “Glamorous Indie Rock & Roll” and a Morrissey cover, “Why Don’t You Find Out for Yourself.” The house sound system blew out seconds into “Somebody Told Me,” but they didn’t lose a step; after a quick Q&A with the crowd—maybe 40 bodies strong at that point—they tore right back into the song, unabashed.

I lived in Seattle for seven more years after that, during which time The Killers became the biggest band in the known world. I talked up their albums to Seattle friends out of a surfeit of hometown pride, but I confess I didn’t listen to the records too often myself. They were a band that I respected more than I enjoyed; there was something in their soaring, immaculately executed anthemic rock that I couldn’t take in more than a little at a time. (But I did get a great deal of mileage, literal and figurative, from “Human” and “Read My Mind,” which—and I say this with genuine respect—are excellent for treadmill runs).

When I returned to Las Vegas in 2012, The Killers had moved past stardom into something approximating landmark status. It was enough to gaze admiringly upward at the monument they’d made, thumbs hooked contently in our belt loops, nodding and saying to visitors, “Yessir, biggest in the world. Grown right here in Vegas.”

Which brings us to The Killers’ new album, Imploding the Mirage, produced by the band (minus founding guitarist Dave Keuning, who remains on hiatus) in collaboration with Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado and Haim/Vampire Weekend producer Shawn Everett—as perfect a pop-rock cocktail as you can hope to enjoy in these dark times, and the first Killers record I’ve enjoyed end to end since 2006’s Sam’s Town. In Mirage’s most thrilling moments, you can hear all three ages of The Killers—the living monument, the nonstop touring band that couldn’t

AAAAC THE KILLERS Imploding the Mirage

help but lose members to exhaustion and the fearless outfit that powered its way right through a blackout— moving together in perfect sync. It’s an equivalence that Brandon Flowers himself describes on one of the record’s best tracks, “Running Towards a Place”: “We are running towards a place/where we’ll walk as one.”

Nearly every one of the 10 tracks on Imploding the Mirage overflows with confidence and ardor, at a time when this city—this country, this world—could use both. Leadoff single “Caution” isn’t about practicing it, but throwing it to the wind: “’Cause it’s some kinda sin/ To live your whole life/on a might’ve been/I’m ready now,” Flowers sings, handing the baton to Fleetwood Mac’s Lindsey Buckingham for a careening solo. (Imploding the Mirage is loaded with guest players including Weyes Blood, The War on Drugs’ Adam Granduciel and k.d. lang, but their contributions don’t distract; they just add splashes of color to the band’s tuneful momentum.) “My Own Soul’s Warning” comes on as broad and mysterious as U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name,” but quickly turns personal, asking itself what really matters: “What kind of words would cut through the clutter of the whirlwind of these days?”

There was no way Flowers, Vannucci and Mark Stoermer could’ve known what kind of mess their hometown would be in when they began making this record. We’re half-closed, out of work, out of luck; while the Mirage still stands, the shimmering dream of this city is collapsing upon itself. But that’s a part of making this town your home: you always feel its ups and downs, even when you’ve packed your traps and moved away—as The Killers have done, as I did years ago. And you declare your belief in that vision, as Flowers does in the reverberating New Wave ballad “When the Dream Runs Dry”: “I will be where I always was,” Flowers sings, “standing at your side.”

That’s the kind of Valley spirit that keeps Las Vegas glued together, and that once encouraged me to walk around Seattle—home of Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and other ultra-mega, world-conquering bands—confidently saying, “You really oughta listen to The Killers.”

HEARING IS BELIEVING INDIGO KIDD GOES ‘PARTY GOTH’ WITH ITS NEW MONTHLY AUDIO SERIES

BY LESLIE VENTURAA

ndigo Kidd drummer GarI rett Curtsinger was walking through Mandalay Bay when he heard the distinct contralto of iconic pop matriarch Cher. Her 1998 hit “Believe” broke out over the speakers, and the percussionist headed home with an idea.

“I was watching TV, and [Garrett] came home and brought up that song,” says older cousin Eli Curtsinger, frontman and guitarist of the local rock band. “I hadn’t thought about it in a while, and I really liked the sound,” Eli, the band’s lead vocalist and guitarist, says. “[But] what if it was more wallowing?”

There’s a palpable sense of despair and urgency to Indigo Kidd’s cover of “Believe” (recorded at Las Vegas’ Naked City Audio), which Eli says was purposeful. “There’s a general mood these days, where people are more open to darker, nihilistic ideas,” he explains.

The energy of “Believe”—loud, raw and bleating—seems to echo the overall feeling of 2020, as the world navigates the uncertainty of a pandemic. The sound is also part of Indigo Kidd’s new trajectory, in which the band takes a more rock ’n’ roll vibe and less of an indie-pop sound, Eli says. It’s something like Roy Orbison meets The Misfits, or, as Curtsinger describes it, “party goth.”

“We want to be easygoing,” Eli says. “We don’t want to take ourselves too seriously, and we want to make some just really good rock music. But we’re also going to make songs that are existentially burdened, or maybe even nihilistic in nature.”

The trio—the Curtsinger brothers and bassist Dalton Willett—recently finished tracking a handful of new songs at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, Texas, some 30 miles east of El Paso, where a diverse roster of artists like Fiona Apple, Bon Iver and Swans have recorded. “Recording in the room where It’s Blitz! was [made] by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs—one of the bands that made me want to play music—is such a full-circle thing,” Eli beams. “I might not be a musician if that record wasn’t made.”

The trio plans to release a new single every month for the next five months. “I think it’s the future,” he says about releasing songs individually rather than collected on full-length record. “We’d love to do an album, but it would suck to release [it] and have this feeling like not that many people heard it or it’s just out there aging. Because there’s no touring or live shows, it’s forced us to get creative on how to approach lots of things.”

Indigo Kidd recently recorded two covers from the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender—“Leaves From the Vine” and “Secret Tunnel”—both with accompanying YouTube At-Home Sessions videos.

The band’s monthly Sonic Ranch releases are scheduled to begin August 31, with more visual content on the way, too. “We’ve just been trying to stay busy and stay creative,” Eli says. “There’s some really creative and talented people Downtown that we want to work with and let the good times roll.”

INDIGO KIDD indigokidd.com indigokidd.bandcamp.com instagram.com/indigokiddband facebook.com/indigo.the.kidd

NOISE

POP-UP CELEBRATION AUGUST 13, 2020

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