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talkstostrangers:

The Killers in the RS magazine June - from my personal source :3

Recording Fourth LP, The Killers Take the Hard Way.

Inside the grueling, yearlong sessions for the Vegas crew’s fall album

Coming up in Las Vegas, the Killers learned a trick or two from the casinos, like not having any clocks on their studios wall. They have spent the past year here working weekdays, noon to midnight, on their upcoming LP, Battle Born, and it’s still not done. “It’s living up to its title,” says drummer Ronnie Vannucci Jr., sitting in the control room about a mile from the Strip. “This is our difficult fourth record”.

After touring and recording nonstop from 2004 to 2010, the Killers took a year off to focus on side projects. “It was like being in training,” says frontman Brandon Flowers. “I was keeping myself not just occupied, but ready.” To better prepare himself for the Killers’ return, he even took sing lessons. Flowers seems nervous as he says this, his right leg vibrating like a jackhammer. “We haven’t done interviews in a while,” he add apologetically.

The band has brought in multiple A-list producers since reconvening - including Brendan O’Brien, Steve Lillywhite, Daniel Lanois, Björk collaborator Damian Taylor and dance-music maven Stuart Price. “It’s a little bit our fault,” Flowers says. “We thought we would wait to see what the album was before we pulled the trigger on who we wanted.” Adds Vannucci, “We’re not used to splitting up our brains like that.”

Yet for al the different hands on the soundboard, Battle Born always sound like the Killers. “We write a very particular type of song when we get together,” Flowers says. “So many people try to find something wrong with it, but I’m not embarrassed by it.” Highlights like “Heart of a Girl”,”Flesh and Bone” and “Carry Me Home” follow a familiar template - beginning slowly before exploding in a glitter bomb of guitars and huge vocals.

Another standout track, “Runaways”, is a galloping arena-ready cut that dates back to the night of a bad gig in Santa Barbara, California, in 2009. Frustrated by the apathy of the crowd, the band returned to its tour bus to work on the tune. Vannucci remembers, “We were like, ‘Fuck that show, this song is great!’”

The Killers suffered a tragedy in late April, when saxophonist Tommy Marth, who played on their past two albums and joined them on tour, committed suicide. “He was a crazy motherfucker, but in a great way”, Vannucci says. “He would joke about serious stuff, but always throw it into the comic realm. Nobody ever said, “Tom, you OK, dude” We wrote a new song a couple of weeks ago, and we were thinking about having him come in to play on that, but it never happened.”

Battle Born (which is also what the Killers named their studio) takes its tittle from an unofficial nickname for their home state. “In a sense, all Americans are battle-born,” Flowers says. “Our ancestors came here for something better.”

For now, the band is still grinding away toward a tentative fall release date. “It gets harder as you get older,” add the singer, who turns 31 in June. “You want to put in the same effort, and find the same focus you had when you knew you didn’t want to work at the casino anymore. We’re working it out”.

Gavin Edwards

daywillcome:

Motley Croupiers

Las Vegas rockers, The Killers, return from their side projects to - eventually - craft a new album.

“Are we human?” The Killers’ Brandon Flowers once wondered. “Or are we dancer?” A full 4 years after their last LP, 2008’s Day and Age, the Las Vegas foursome have still not completed a follow up - that makes them very human. There have been solo records - Flowers’s Flamingo sounded like The Killers with the vocals turned up, drummer Ronnie Vannucci, Jr’s Big Talk, sounded like The Killers with the drums turned up, bassist Mark Stoermer’s sounded like Bob Dylan with the, oh, you get the message - but the longer they remain locked in their Mojave Desert studio, Battle Born, the more you can think, “Maybe bands can take too much time off.”

“I’m sure that’s a danger” Flowers says. “It’s a bit strange to spend time learning to hone your skills and figure out what makes you unique as a band, then take half a decade off” 

When the risk you take is that it’s not all there when you come back?

“Exactly,” Flowers says. “We just hope that lightning strikes again”

If Battle Born ever has an elevator pitch, it’s “No curveballs”. After a string of albums that messed with the format - who can forget the heads-down riffola of All The Pretty Faces from Sawdust? - The Killers aren’t planning on this record frightening even one small horse, although Flowers adds the caveatt, “It’s still eclectic, I’ve not thrown the keyboards away.”

But it’s definitely more rock, we ask?

“It’s definitely heavier,” He nods.

Whenever a band has been away working on solo projects for a few years the fear is that someone in the camp will go crazy and demand a “jazz odyssey” direction. Happily, the one fresh song they aired at their London Scala show last year, The Rising Tide, didn’t even look in that direction. In fact, it’s uplifting electro-pop clatter wouldn’t have sounded out of place on Hot Fuss. “But we’re keeping our eye on Dave” suggests Vannucci Jr. “He already looks like Pat Metheny”

As far as other new songs go, Flowers’s favourite has the working title, Miss Atomic Bomb (“Can’t you see her in her sash?”) while Vannucci Jr talks up three he’s currently gripped by, Runaways, Flesh And Bone and Carry Me Home.

“These songs are so good I’m just desperate to play some shows” the drummer pleads. “I’d play the opening of a 7-Eleven at this point.”

While the band were working, Flowers found time to front the A Fire Still Burning campaign for the Mormon Church, a group he believes are misunderstood by the wider public. “That’s why Mitt Romney suffers. People are told lies about us and they believe them.” More personally, the band have just suffered a huge shock with the suicide of their sax player, Thomas Marth, who recorded and toured both their last two albums. “When you go through life and everything seems sunny and then you just kind of get hit with that?” says Flowers. “It put everything into sharp perspective.”

Now all they have to do is ensure that the lightning strikes in such amazing ways that Battle Born blows all out minds. No pressure, lads.

(via thedevilwrappinguphishands)

(Source: talkstostrangers)