The Killers' press release is surprisingly straightforward, explicitly detailing the punchcard proving ground that this Las Vegas quartet sprang from before phrases like "bidding war" and "headlining tour" entered their daily vocabulary. But it can afford this bit of honesty, since the British music press has shouldered the load of attendant Killers hyperbole, and because the band's Hot Fuss checks most of its truths at the door to their 800-foot limo.
By autumn 2003, their single "Mr. Brightside" had secured the usual Best! Band! Ever! overstatements from UK scribes, and the song's happily vacant grafting of New Order decadence to Housemartins bop bounced it hard into CMJ and SXSW. Subsequently, the band's dance card attracted Warbucksian suitors of the largest variety. And now, the resulting Hot Fuss drops on both sides of the Atlantic wrapped in this tabloid backstory, unable to separate its hype from its unabashedly referential sound.
Hot Fuss floats boatloads of blasé lyrics about the pressures of being fabulous and the politics of fucking over an easily sippable blend of 80s and 90s British pop influences, rarely pausing to test the end product. Top-shelf mixing and attention to melody helps out the record's appeal as lifestyle music for sheltered bloggers and female professionals who still wear cool hairstyles. But damnit if that demographic leaves little room for a life of The Killers' own. Where are they, besides their wily references to past pop pros and a vague sense of Sin City cynicism? Not anywhere, really: The Killers are just the latest band to be born too quick inside the popular music vacuum, where expectations for broad accessibility kill dudes' potential for deeper creativity quite fabulously dead.
This is disappointing, since Fuss' better moments make The Killers' knack for hooks and cool poses clear. Vocalist/keyboardist Brandon Flowers has replaced his tonsils with melodrama; he's hijacked Jarvis Cocker's accent to make his Vegas-boy rep sound that much tighter. "Brightside" isn't getting near the dejection of The Stills; it has no illusions about being anything other than a provocative single. Its relentless keyboard 'n' guitar racket shuns dourness altogether, as Flowers remarkably makes lines about a girlfriend getting off with some other guy resonate as some kind of weird triumph. "Somebody Told Me"'s deadpan couplets about having a "boyfriend who looks like a girlfriend" are similarly clever, but the cut's a brazen rewrite of The Strokes' treble-kick heroics. Yes, Casablancas, et al ripped off pieces of their sound, too, but that's the difference-- they already did the ripping. The Killers' recombination arrives too late to be recognized as first-tier thievery. At this point, Hot Fuss is just bringing it from what's already been brought.
Hot Fuss opener "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" establishes Flowers' admirable love for tones lost to rockers' rising fears of sounding too fruity. But as the album's singles follow in quick succession, rocking a sound softer than post-punk but full of the stuff that came right after it, The Killers can't figure a way to add resonance beyond adding more keyboards, more layered guitars, more cribbing of established tastemaking currency (check the intellectual-property-case-waiting-to-happen that is "Change Your Mind"). In other words, Hot Fuss has no use for subtlety. It revels in its appearance as The Shit from day one, allowing for filler-type indulgences like the impossibly aimless-- and quite possibly shitty-- "Everything Will Be Alright". Meanwhile, Fuss' UK version excises the brazenly contemporary raggedness of "Change Your Mind" for the astoundingly inane "Indie Rock 'n' Roll", a blaring joke of thick-chorded guitar and arrogant, pitch-corrected yowling that gives out cornholes to every unknown American group valiantly trying to find the cracks of creativity in its titular sound.
So, it's plain that The Killers have made a record more concerned with artifice than artistry. If the intent is to place their album's principal teases on the next Now That's What I Call Music compilation, then bravo. But why does it try to squeak by as another deft pop reversion when it actually seems to be a revisionist cash dance? For the kids, I presume. But Hot Fuss is not hardcore; it's hard evidence that it's tough to focus on making great rock when you're preoccupied with cultivating an image.
