Given his predilection towards the genre, it’s no big surprise that Brandon Flowers finally made a fully-fledged country-western album. The Killers frontman has also shown his fondness for country before, be it with his band (see Sam’s Town) or on his own; you can see unabashed influences on his 2010 debut solo album Flamingo, even if he was channelling it through flashy indie pop funnels.
THRASHER arrives, then, with an air of the inevitable. It’s flush with stars of the country world such as harmonica player Charlie McCoy, guitarist David Rawlings, and pedal steel player Bruce Bouton. Flowers cites Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash as influences and says it picks up where the Killers’ 2021 album Pressure Machine left off. It’s like Flowers had everything ready to go and was just waiting for the right time.
For the most part the outfit suits Flowers. With the means to go all out (which is often his way of approaching things, for better or worse) he’s able to construct an album that is full of detail and vibrant with life. It tips its stetson hard, but the unabashed tone helps it. The honky tonk bounce of “One of Us” is a sweet ode to Flower’s late brother-in-law where its earnestness steers it clear of being saccharine. “Paradise” is positively radiating with instrumentation and sunshine; banjos, bells, pedal steel guitar, mandolin, and organ fill the landscape and it’s impossible to not get caught up on with upbeat tone (despite the downtrodden lyrics). Mariachi Los Camperos de Jesús Chuy Guzmán adds some festive flair to “Red Ground” while closing track “An American Dream” is full of end-of-the-night woozy swaying. “Take me back home,” Flowers requests, despite feeling very much there during the preceding 40 minutes.
While musically spirited and infectious, Flowers’ lyrics do have a few instances where his clunky phrasing distracts from everything else. He knows his way around a hook, but he’s never been one for life-changing affirmations (unless “Are we human? / Or are we dancer?” can be considered life-changing).
On THRASHER he opts for storytelling mode, overpainting songs with detail to create setting and tell tales of characters from his childhood in Nephi, Utah. There are plenty of clunkers and cumbersome phrases that stick out like sore thumbs – “Peach fuzz boys getting hard in the corner / On Mortal Kombat”, “Got picked up by Elvis in a Tesla Model X” – but what’s worse is when he tries to shoehorn in stories and perspectives of women and people of colour (“Miss America”,“Angel”). Flowers is a good enough lyricist to know to avoid a phrase like “porno eyes” when narrating the male gaze and, even more egregiously, “chocolate and vanilla swirls” when describing a mixed race child (especially when the track already has Flowers trying real hard to make his own version of “House of the Rising Sun”).
And yet, it’s hard to understate the almost unrelenting endearing quality THRASHER has, even when it’s missing a mark. “Tiger’s Blood” would have fit in comfortably on Flamingo, and has his penchant for big arena choruses showing on his sleeve. Still, there’s something kind of heartbreaking and universal about a line like “No one ever thinks that they’ll be lonely / When they’re all grown up.” Similarly, the opening track “Does It Ever Cross Your Mind?” is full of starry-eyed childish wonder as he muses about how everything he ever needed is where he grew up. “Some may call it a coincidence / But I prefer design,” he sings with an undeniable fatherly glee. It’s par for the course; to expect any lesser kind of sincerity from Flowers would be foolish. This is the kind of record where Flowers will mention a bell and one goes and rings right after. The nuance is little, but the heart is huge. His love of country-western is on display and there ain’t nobody who can get in his way of showing it.
