By Ben Grad
Though The Killers are associated with Las Vegas in their album art, promotional materials, and stage props, their sound is more international, purposefully divorced from the little musical gestures that normally add the prefixes "West Coast," "Southern," or "Midwest" to a band's biography. If anything, their musical roots are closer to Oasis and The Cure – bands which make an art out of deliberately overblown emotional outpourings.
But Friday's show was definitely Vegas: a series of musical fireworks set against a backdrop of palm trees and several billion quick-firing lights. Brandon Flowers played ringmaster and orchestra conductor for the spectacle, leaping between his keyboards, the tops of amps, and the far edges of the Atlanta Civic Center's wide stage. Behind Flowers, the band played with the well practiced precision of a group that's been touring almost continually since the November release of Day & Age.
There were, however, some notes of dissonance in the show. The strength of The Killers' music has always been Brandon Flowers' ability to create a continual series of emotional vocal crescendos throughout a song; as Flowers' hit those highs Friday night the entire audience transformed into a sea of outstretched fists and screaming fans. You're probably familiar with the choruses "I've got soul, but I'm not a soldier," and "Are we human, or are we dancer" even if you haven't turned on your radio for years – testaments to the emotional pull of Flowers' voice. But, the thousands of times Flowers has repeated these lyrics water down that emotional pull when they're heard in concert. Listening to Flowers is almost like watching a presidential campaign speech – though you can admire the effort put into the creation of the spectacle, the words themselves are completely drained of their original meaning or emotional relevance. In that sense, The Killers are a quintessentially Vegas band – you'll love their performance, but you probably won't remember it next week.
