London,

Killers knock 'em dead

By John Aizlewood, Evening Standard  19.09.06

No matter how terrific they look on the smaller screen, few bands can overcome the limitations of a concert filmed for television. In The Killers' case, last night's Vodafone-sponsored show for a rabid audience of competition winners was filmed by Channel 4.

This meant some hapless television lackey had to beg a rammed Electric Ballroom not to drink, not to smoke, not to use flash photography and not to throw beer.

Needless to say and splendid to relate, the concert was a sozzled, nicotine-stained affair and only those too busy throwing beer weren't blinded by the firestorm of flash photography.

Ever nimble, The Killers ignored the cameramen creeping around the stage and, in their first British show for a year, set about proving a few points. In fact, the Las Vegas quartet have much to prove.

Their first album, 2004's Hot Fuss, sold a healthy five million copies. Yet it was so big, so shiny and so unashamedly heroic that the longer its successor took, the more the doubts grew and the more it seemed as though, like so many before them, The Killers struggled when confronted with crafting a monster's successor.

Not a bit of it. As the impassioned, kitchen-sink-and-everything current single, When You Were Young, suggested, Sam's Town is bigger, shinier and even more unashamedly heroic than Hot Fuss. No wonder singer and occasional keyboardist Brandon Flowers, all shiny white suit and cowboy's tie, was dressed like the carney offspring of Elvis Presley's manager "Colonel" Tom Parker.

No wonder too The Killers had such an air of a revivalist meeting about them that before Mr Brightside, guitarist Dave Keuning shook his Leo Sayer-like hair and told us how deeply he loves his fellow Killers. They have music to sell and sell it will.

They merged old and new with glee. Whether standing behind his keyboards or prowling across stage, Flowers is more prone to declaiming than conventional singing and so whenever he opened his mouth, drama followed, be it on a rocket-fuelled Somebody Told Me, the reggae-tinged singalong Glamorous Indie Rock And Roll or the closer, All These Things That I've Done, which left the crowd chanting "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" long after the band had stopped.

The new material, mostly unfamiliar to the audience, was received in peachy fashion. Uncle Jonny was an epic of redemption, Read My Mind an almost delicate slab of multi- hued melody and the imperious My List - with its echoes of Slade's long-lost How Does It Feel? - was the unmistakable sound of a potentially great band going for the jugular and shifting into actual greatness.

By that spine-tingling climax, I'd long-forgotten it was a television gig. Fabulous.

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