Imploding the Mirage

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With their latest album, Las Vegas-based rock band The Killers still prove they have juice enough to keep going, even as a three-pieced. Imploding The Mirage proves to be a natural progression from their very uneven Wonderful Wonderful, combining majestic arena rock with more new wave-based synth-rock. The resulting album lands somewhere between their 2008 album Day & Age and the follow-up Battle Born, with production values closer to Wonderful Wonderful.

Imploding The Mirage is a fantastic showcase of Brandon Flower's unique vocals, hooky melodies and lyrics based in modern-day society, politics and religion. The melodies combine vulnerability with those characteristically bombastic Killers choruses. My Own Soul's Warning is a great opener, while Caution proves to be their most successful and satisfying single since Human. That being said, there are plenty of songs that just seem to exist for the danceability and not their lyrical content, such as the rather repetitive Dying Breed or Lighting Fields and My God, both of which feature guest artist and just seem to exist to please a wider audience. And then we have FIre In Bone, which despite its fine guitars and drums just sounds so wrong. Despite the undying energy of most tracks, there are also vulnerability and personal touch on many tracks, making this another personal album for Flowers.