Updated 10/5/2006 1:01 AM ET
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
The Killers titled their new album, Sam's Town, after an old casino on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Before the freeway was built, singer Brandon Flowers remembers the 20-mile stretch of highway connecting his home in Henderson, Nev., to Sam's place on the eastern edge of a city teeming with thrills and temptation.
"When you got to Sam's, you were almost there," he says. "I feel like that's where the band is now. We're really getting somewhere."
To say the least. On the strength of Grammy-nominated hits Mr. Brightside, Somebody Told Me and All These Things That I've Done, The Killers sold 3.1 million copies of 2004's critically hailed debut, Hot Fuss.
Sam's Town, out this week, could be on a similar course. Mojo dubs it "an action-packed blockbuster." On-the-rise single When You Were Young, which has sold 170,000 downloads so far, is "a cyclone ride of insta-nostalgia that takes in Jesus and the devil, and has a hook as big as both," Blender raves.
That song, plus This River Is Wild and For Reasons Unknown, reflects on values that have faded with passing generations, a theme that emerged as Flowers' globe-trotting instilled both a disquieting worldliness and unexpected homesickness.
A newfound appreciation for the wide open spaces of home is "one reason some songs feel like the desert and the Wild West," Flowers, 25, says. "I was always proud of where I was from, but you always think the grass is greener somewhere else. Because of David Bowie and Robert Smith, I had fantasies of England. Going there was a big eye-opener. It wasn't as mystical as I made them in my mind."
He was dismayed by the unfriendly reception he and his bandmates often received overseas as a result of unpopular U.S. foreign policies.
"In Europe, as soon as people heard my accent, I was treated poorly," he says. "People see us as devils, and we're getting a bad rap because of the war. I wanted to make an album that was human, that reminded people what's great about America."
He turned to his parents for inspiration.
"They're in their 60s. I was raised on the morals and values that seem to be eroding or dying now. We're going downhill, it seems to me. The work ethic has changed. My dad was a hard worker and still is at 64. People today are lazy."
He sees a similar inertia in modern rock and is puzzled when appetite and drive are viewed as unhealthy traits. After wrapping up 400 shows late last year, Flowers, guitarist David Keuning, bassist Mark Stoermer and drummer Ronnie Vannucci returned to Vegas and started recording with producers Flood and Alan Moulder.
"People are putting us down for being ambitious, and there are critics who want us to fail," Flowers says. "A lot of bands are getting cynical about hooks and lazier with lyrics and melodies."
Yet mediocrity sells, he grudgingly concedes. Paris Hilton's CD sails into the top 10 "because people feel like they had something to do with it," he says. "It's reality TV now. You get a vote on American Idol. It's upsetting, and it's hurting bands. I hate it.
"But a good song will still find its place. I knew that about Mr. Brightside. As small as we were, I knew one day a lot of people would hear it."
What may surprise fans of Hot Fuss and its British bent is Sam's Town's heartland core, the result in part of Flowers' rediscovered reverence for Bruce Springsteen.
"It was a matter of me getting older and hearing the songs differently," he says. "I heard them through a man's ears, finally. I hadn't felt like that since I fell in love with The Cars and The Smiths. It gave a new breath of life into this album. I do love Bruce, but I was listening to a lot of stuff: Dire Straits, Peter Gabriel, Tom Petty, ELO."
The Killers will tour the USA through October before heading overseas Nov. 1 for European dates, an itinerary that both excites and distresses Flowers, whose fear of flying is documented in the tune Why Do I Keep Counting?
"As soon as we hit turbulence, I instantly start praying," says Flowers, who never flew until The Killers took off. He began seeing a psychiatrist to learn relaxation techniques. "I'm never going to love to fly, but I can't freak out like I used to. I'd cramp so much that I'd be sore for days."
He happily suffers for his art when the payoff is getting on stage in a packed venue.
"We're from Vegas. The glitz, the glamour. You go into a diner or a 7-Eleven, and there are pictures of Sinatra and Elvis on the walls. Performing is in our blood."
Posted 10/4/2006 11:38 PM ET
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