The first time I saw the Killers, at a South by Southwest party in March 2004, they looked like they had just stepped out of Early 2000s Alt-Rock Central Casting: you had Brandon Flowers facing the 95-degree sunshine in a black suit, as if he were auditioning to be Carlos D's Interpol understudy; guitarist Dave Keuning playing the part of the Rapture's Luke Jenner with his tight jeans and afro; and, with his long nose and blond moptop, it appeared bassist Mark Stoermer was modeling himself after Von Bondies frontman Jason Stollsteimer.
Back then, wanting to be a Von Bondie wasn't such a crazy idea: They had just released their acclaimed, Jerry Harrison-produced major-label debut, Pawn Shoppe Heart, powered by a heavily rotated single ("C'mon C'mon") that would land them on Letterman. And if their early, career-boosting friendship with the White Stripes had already soured (following an infamous December 2003 altercation at a Detroit nightclub between Jack White and Stollsteimer), Pawn Shoppe's release was fortuitously timed to capitalize on the sensationalist attention.
Of course, in the five years since, the Killers would go on to sell several million albums while the Von Bondies were practically on life support, losing bassist Carrie Smith and guitarist Marcie Bolen, effecting a nasty split with Sire and surviving largely by the use of "C'mon C'mon" as the opening theme to F/X series "Rescue Me". Compared to the buzz that greeted Pawn Shoppe Heart, the release of the Von Bondies' new third album, Love, Hate, and Then There's You has been beyond low-key-- after the band first announced its release over a year ago, it arrives now on fledgling Shout Factory offshoot Majordomo Records.
But despite all this upheaval and tumult, Love, Hate, and Then There's You sounds like it could've come out five months after Pawn Shoppe Heart, never mind five years. On that last album, the Von Bondies were already initiating a spiritual break from the Detroit garage-rock scene that birthed them, tempering their blues-punk swing with bubblegum-sweet choruses; Love, Hate shifts that process into overdrive, enlisting producers Butch Walker and Rick Parker (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) to gloss over the last vestiges of the grease. On opening track "This Is Our Perfect Crime", Stollsteimer welcomes his band back into indie-dom by declaring "we are the underground," but the song around him has other designs: armed with a crisp, clipped riff, melodramatic mid-song breakdown/build-up, and group-chorus-as-manifesto, the new Von Bondies reemerge with all the stern-faced intent and self-belief of, well, the Killers.
For those who remember the Von Bondies as trashy maximum-R&B revivalists on Sympathy for the Record Industry, it'll be hard to get back onboard-- in the absence of their fuzzbox boogie, the band's doomed-romance laments ("Only to Haunt You", "Pale Bride") could be the product of any number of NME-mugging modern-rock acts adopting new-wave affectations. And like any rock band trying to survive in the post-Arcade Fire era, the Von Bondies succumb to the obligatory bout of U2/Springsteen stadium-baiting, building a slow-percolating synth intro into a typically blustery finale on "Modern Saints", which climaxes with a martyr-ready cry of "Take my heart away/ Forevermore!" The Von Bondies don't embarass themselves with these grandstanding gestures-- Stollsteimer's got the voice for the job-- but they don't distinguish themselves either. Where their earlier records thrived on the tension between Stollsteimer's gut-spilling confessions and the band's raucous, raw-powered attack, on Love, Hate and Then There's You, we get all the pleading, but without the violent, cathartic release.
But Stollsteimer is nothing if not self-aware of his polarizing capabilities, and he spends about half of "Shut Your Mouth" taunting the skeptics by repeatedly asking, "Can you say a good word about us?" Most certainly-- when Stollsteimer eases up on the chest-beating dramatics, the Von Bondies can be a pretty great and very fun power-pop band: The glam-slammed "Accidents Will Happen" is the sort of bouncing-beat rocker you wish the Strokes would get back to writing, while "21st Birthday" and "Chancer" are Cheap Trickeriffic three-minute kiss-offs, with new guitarist Christy Hunt and bassist Leann Banks ably replacing Bolen and Smith as Stollsteimer’s cool-chick vocal foils. "You don't look so cool but you look so alive," Stollsteimer sings on "Chancer", and for the new Von Bondies, the latter point matters more than the former.
