The Killers
Wonderful Wonderful

Wonderful Wonderful arrives in 2017 after a very uneven album like Battle Born (2012) where a handful of different producers (all talented) had caused the album to lose identity, sounding in many ways, but not sounding like The Killers.

This Wonderful Wonderful is Killer-sound, with no compromises.

The Man, chosen as the launch single, is a track that skillfully blends disco-funk and New Wave: funk had already made an appearance in other tracks, like the beautiful Joy Ride in Day & Age (2008), but here it is more focused and especially more contaminated; the contamination of genres is The Killers’ trademark. Wonderful Wonderful, the opening song, is another track many bands would dream of writing without success: a bass opening and a bassline always above everything else, a track that sometimes sounds very dark, almost gothic, a meeting between The Cure and Depeche Mode. Run for Cover recovers the band’s discographic origins, which led to a bombshell debut with the beautiful Hot Fuss (2004): synths and bass, the group’s trademark, but without melodies nothing new can be achieved, and this is what allows the guys from Las Vegas to survive unlike many other alternative rock or indie rock bands that have hidden a total lack of ideas and music under the cloak of alternative. Some Kind of Love is a masterpiece, a rarefied track with Brandon Flowers’ voice in the forefront, for a modern "gospel," with Flowers’ children in the choir. The Calling at times recalls Personal Jesus by Depeche Mode in the verse, an excellent track, perhaps the most "rock" of the bunch, with a great guitar performance by Dave Keuning, a very versatile guitarist, and a good composer (this track, like many others by the band, has his hands as the author of the music). My favorite closes the album: Have All the Songs Been Written? There’s Mark Knopfler, with a few masterful touches, intentionally without much flair, but just enough to go deep, the rest is done by Flowers’ voice and the extraordinary old-school melody.

Have all the songs been written? I hope not, because music needs artists like these, capable of stylistic contamination, to progress without closing off into vintage cover-band territory or into "new" alternative soul-less music.