Artist: Brandon Flowers
Album: Flamingo
Label: Island
Rating: 2
The Killers’ front man steps out into his own limelight on solo album Flamingo. The album, which Flowers wanted to be homage to his hometown of Las Vegas, falls short of dazzling. Spread out over 40 minutes, the album should have been called Sam’s Town II, with Flowers regressing back to his Springsteen worship and shoddy lyrics that play with ideas of angels, devils, lost loves and other big life and death situations. Songs like “Hard Enough” and “Jilted Lovers and Broken Hearts” sound like songs the Killers left on the cutting room floor and are hollow and fragmented. Flowers failed to take himself anywhere as a songwriter, and saved face by not pushing himself to challenge the boundaries in which he feels very safe in.
The only redeeming quality on the album is the running Las Vegas theme. Overall this is a nice soft rock, drive time radio album that fades in to the background on almost every occasion.
Give these tracks a listen: “Was it Something I Said,” “Swallow It”
For fans of: U2, The Killers
– Anastasia Zhuravleva
